Studying the structure of DNA not only reveals information about gene expression but is also helping researchers speed diagnoses and find cures for some of our most challenging and deadly medical conditions. However, to get to the point where you can create a new drug, a cure, or other lifesaving medical advance requires massive amounts of data and a way to quickly and efficiently turn that data into actionable insight.
While clinicians and researchers have little trouble generating the data that can fuel genomic research, what they have lacked, up until now, are the tools that turn data into insight. What has been vital to the acceleration of genomic research are cloud-based technologies that can support the fast analysis of exabytes of data or facilitate the transfer of these data rich files between research groups around the world.
According to Dr. Hakon Gudbjartsson, Ph.D. and CIO of WuXi NextCODE, the only genomic information company that uses sequence data to improve health for people around the world, the company leverages NetApp® Cloud Data Services and NetApp Cloud Volumes Service, to create a global platform for genomic big data that:
- Enables organizations to leverage genome analysis to improve health and support wellness
- Activates the only data architecture designed specifically to optimize the use of genomic data
- Creates the standard for organizing, mining, and sharing large-sequence dataset with the genome platform
At the heart of the WuXi NextCODE platform is the genomic relational database, the only data architecture designed to optimize the use of massive genomic data. Optimization is imperative to the process when you consider that the volume of genomic data more than doubles every year and that there will be 6.2 exabytes of genomic data generated by 2019. Handling that amount of data can slow traditional systems down and ratchet up costs.
“The benchmark for analyzing genomic data is accessing it from data from 100,000 individuals,” Dr. Gudbjartsson said. “We always had timeouts or file failures. But when we tested this using the NetApp Cloud Volumes Service, it actually finished in less than an hour. That was a great breakthrough for us.”
Ready to learn how your organization can accelerate genomic research with next-generation data management solutions.
