What You Should Know:
– Verily and The Broad Institute have partnered with
Microsoft to expand health and life sciences research utilizing the Microsoft
Azure cloud.
– The new partnership brings together Microsoft’s cloud, data, and AI technologies, and a global network of more than 168,000 health and life sciences partners to accelerate the development of global biomedical research through the Terra platform, provide greater access and empower the open-source community.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Verily, an Alphabet company, and Microsoft Corp. announced a
strategic partnership to accelerate new innovations in biomedicine through the
Terra platform. Terra, originally developed by
Verily and the Broad Institute, is a secure, scalable, open-source platform for
biomedical researchers to access data, run analysis tools and collaborate.
Terra is actively used by thousands of researchers every month to analyze data
from millions of participants in important scientific research projects.
Importance
of Open-Source Biomedical Data
Biomedical data are being generated and digitized at a historic rate and are expected to reach dozens of exabytes by 2025 — including data from genomics, medical imaging, biometric signals, and electronic health records. Coupled with powerful research and analysis tools, these datasets can provide lifesaving insights into some of the world’s most pressing health issues. But making use of these important datasets remains difficult for researchers who face huge, siloed data estates, disparate tools, fragmented systems and data standards, and varying governance and security policies.
Partnership
Objectives
The new partnership aims to break through those barriers by bringing together Microsoft’s cloud, data, and AI technologies, and a global network of more than 168,000 health and life sciences partners to accelerate the development of global biomedical research through the Terra platform, provide greater access and empower the open-source community. Building on the open-source foundation of Terra, the new collaboration will advance the ability of data scientists, biomedical researchers, and clinicians around the world to collaborate in tackling some of the most complex and widespread diseases facing society today.
The Broad-Verily-Microsoft partnership brings together leading genomics and computer science researchers, data scientists, and technology experts to jointly deliver on the vision of the Terra platform.
Partnership
Benefits for Health & Life Sciences Research
Through collaboration with Microsoft, the companies will accelerate Terra’s vision for health and life sciences research by:
– Expanding
on Terra’s open, modular and interoperable research platform, with the addition
of the Microsoft Azure cloud, data and AI technologies, and global capabilities
– Increasing
Terra’s accessibility to the more than 168,000 health and life sciences
organizations partnering with Microsoft around the world
– Enabling
secure and authenticated access to distributed data stores via collaborative
workspaces
– Allowing access to a rapidly growing portfolio of open and proprietary standards-based tools, best practices workflows, and APIs
– Enabling
federated data analysis to uncover insights and build novel analytical and
predictive models while ensuring patient privacy
– Creating
a seamless and secure flow to speed the delivery of data and insights between
research and clinical domains
– Using
open APIs and modular components to advance the standards-based biomedical data
ecosystem in line with the open, compatible and secure approach to data
developed by the Data Biosphere and the responsible
policies and technical standards established by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health
