This special report concerns a talk on data standards given at a workshop entitled ‘An International Perspective on Pharmacogenetics: The Intersections between Innovation, Regulation and Health Delivery’, which was held by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on October 17–19, 2005, in Rome, Italy. The worlds of healthcare and life sciences (HCLS) are extremely fragmented in terms of their underlying information technology, making it difficult to semantically exchange information between disparate entities. While we have reached the point where functional interoperability is ubiquitous, we are still far from achieving true semantic interoperability where a receiving system can use incoming data as though it was created internally. The critical enablers of semantic interoperability are information standards dedicated to HCLS data, spanning all the way from biological research data to clinical research and clinical trials, and finally to healthcare clinical data. The challenge lies in integrating various data standards based on predetermined goals, thereby improving the quality of care provided to patients.