Introducing the DARE UK Federated Genomics project
Many research institutions and data providers use computing environments known as ‘trusted research environments’ (TREs) as a way to safely analyse data. However, these individual TREs currently cannot easily be used in combination when researchers would like to make use of data that is held within different TREs. Moving data from one TRE into another across organisations is costly, time consuming and full of barriers when meeting different organisations’ governance policies. The ability to analyse datasets held across different organisations could be very valuable to supporting research.
We have been funded by UK Research & Innovation as part of Phase 1 of the DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) programme, delivered in partnership with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) and ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) to demonstrate a UK-first federation of genomic data by bridging the TRE of CYNAPSE, the new data infrastructure for the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, led by the University of Cambridge, with that of Genomics England.
We will do this by developing technologies that allow datasets held in these independent locations to be analysed simultaneously. The results of the separate analyses can then be combined without the original data ever having to move. The outcomes of this project will help establish new standards for federated TRE systems and unlock unprecedented possibilities for future collaborations with clinical-genomic data, potentially leading to new discoveries with long term public benefit.