The Human Variome Project holds a major meeting every two years to update members on plans, progress and opportunities for the global collection and sharing of genetic variation information. This 4th Human Variome Project meeting will continue the theme of the previous meetings and address issues of implementation in this unique project. As this will be the first meeting of the Consortium since the Project was granted Operational Relations with UNESCO, we are delighted to once again be holding this meeting at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

HVP4 will focus on the next steps to be taken to implement the outcomes of the 2011 HVP Beijing Meeting. The meeting will bring together bioinformaticians, clinical geneticists, researchers, database curators, diagnostic laboratory heads, common disease variation experts, and genome sequencers to address the integration and implementation issues impacting on:

• clinical data collection
• molecular data collection
• distributed databasing (country and gene specific)
• country specific collection
• key pilot projects
• transfer to central databases
• incentives for databasing
• ethics
• funding and governance

More information can be found at the HVP4 Meeting Website.