Researchers at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne wanted to know why there were an increasing number of patients – about a third of them women – being diagnosed with certain types of lung cancer when none of them had smoked and their families had no history of cancer. They turned to big data analytics.
ARES (Advanced networking for the EU genomic Research) is implementing novel genome content distribution solutions to make large data sets accessible to healthcare practitioners for better patient care. Robust and bottleneck-free data networks are key to the success of this vital undertaking.
The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) near Cambridge, UK, distributes datasets worldwide using R&E connectivity. This biological data enables the discovery of new drugs, new diagnostics and increasingly new agro-chemicals. The Institute’s work, which includes the 1000 Genomes Project, has generated petabytes of data and this growth is showing no signs of abating.
Genomics is generating new insights into the genetic causes of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and congenital disorders, and promises to transform healthcare. In Australia, a specialized high-performance network has been deployed for the Kinghorn Centre for Clinical Genomics, the largest genome sequencing centre in the southern hemisphere, helping to close the gap between research and the clinic.
A dedicated line between two supercomputers in Denmark allows biomedical researchers to share data faster and easier than before, helping them carry out their research into the relationship between genetics and psychiatric illnesses.
Today’s scientists are riding an unprecedented wave of discovery, but the immensity of the data needed to facilitate many of these breakthroughs is creating internet roadblocks that are becoming increasingly detrimental to research. With an eye to the future, Clemson University researchers are playing a leading role in developing state-of-the-art methods to transfer these enormous data sets.
Slovenian researchers analysed various aspects of the biology of extremophilic fungi, which can act as pathogens that are harmful to humans and used the same methods in their winning solution in data mining for the European Space Agency.
Genetics researchers around the globe have access to a comprehensive record of all sequenced DNA, thanks to an international effort to share massive amounts of information between databases in Japan, the United States, and Europe.
The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused significant damage to local hospitals in the disaster area, destroying medical information systems in the hospitals and losing patients’ important medical records. The losses prompted Japan’s university hospitals to jointly construct a new backup system that keeps their medical backup data in remotely located areas.
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