The most important component of the BIONET collaboration is a series of 6 workshops and conferences. The workshops are designed to feed into two overall conferences scheduled to be held in April 2008 and August 2009. It is on the basis of these workshops and conferences that BIONET will be able to gather an evidence base which can be useful for policy makers, researchers, bio-ethicists and others interested in development in the life sciences. The workshops and conferences will focus on three key areas reproductive medicine, genomic research into disease susceptibility and treatability and biobanking and will in particular look at how issues of ethical governance, informed consent and benefit sharing come into play around these forms of research and practice in China and Europe.