IT Infrastructure & Architecture

One of the most common activities mentioned in the implementation initiatives is establishing and maintaining the necessary IT infrastructure and architecture to support the massive data sets and subsequent analysis, reporting and data sharing functions. This is a major investment underpinning the implementation of genomic medicine and so it is unsurprising that understanding and providing advice to decision makers on the current and future infrastructure needs and optimum configuration is a key objective of most demonstration projects and policy frameworks.

Depending on the local context and size of the initiative, this might involve creating a central data repository and for others a federated or dispersed model is more appropriate. The IT infrastructure and architecture needs to be scalable as the amount of genomic medicine practiced increases and also needs to be interoperable with third-party software tools and health systems. A key part of this area of activity is the use of Cloud-based storage and processing/bioinformatics services.

Resource on IT Infrastructure & Cloud computing

Langmead B, Nellore A. Cloud computing for genomic data analysis and collaboration. Nat Rev Genet. 2018;19(4):208-19. http://doi.org/10.1038/nrg.2017.113

Cole BS, Moore JH. Eleven quick tips for architecting biomedical informatics workflows with cloud computing. PLoS Comput Biol. 2018;14(3):e1005994. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005994

Stephens ZD, Lee SY, Faghri F, Campbell RH, Zhai C, Efron MJ, et al. Big Data: Astronomical or Genomical? PLoS Biol. 2015;13(7):e1002195. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002195

GA4GH Cloud Work Stream https://www.ga4gh.org/howwework/workstreams/cloud-vision-statement.html