Arguably the biggest paradox concerning the spread of health IT has involved the potential benefits of collecting previously unimaginable amounts of biomedical data combined with the huge challenge of figuring out how to organize and manage those same stockpiles.
With that challenge in mind, and with the goal of accelerating the pace of potential biomedical innovations, a new strategic partnership has been unveiled that includes Microsoft, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Verily, an Alphabet company. The partnership supports the Terra platform, a secure, scalable, open-source platform for biomedical researchers to access data, run analysis tools, and collaborate.
According to a Microsoft statement, via the Terra platform companies will analyze data from over 168,000 of Microsoft’s health and life science partners to advance development of global biomedical research, boost access to data, and empower the open-source community.
“Through this partnership, we will apply the power of Microsoft Azure and its enterprise-grade capabilities in security and privacy, along with cutting-edge data and AI solutions like Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Machine Learning and Azure Cognitive Services, to deliver on the vision of the Terra platform at a new level of scale,” explained Gregory Moore, MD, PhD, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health Next.
The partners note that while biomedical data - including data from genomics, medical imaging, biometric signals and EHRs - are being generated and digitized faster than ever before, “”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.”
The goal of the Broad-Verily-Microsoft partnership is to bring together technology experts, science researchers, and data scientists to combat these challenges via a range of initiatives which, taken together, will aim to boost Terra’s overall vision for health and life sciences.
“Our three organizations share the goals of improving patient care, driving innovation in biomedical research, and lowering costs across healthcare and life sciences,” said Stephen Gillett, chief operating officer at Verily. “This partnership combines multimodal data, secure analytics and scalable cloud computing to improve insight and evidence generation, allowing us to ultimately impact more patients’ lives.”
The companies will first expand on Terra’s open, modular and interoperable research platform, then ensure secure and authenticated access to distributed data stores, ensure access to growing portfolios of open and proprietary standards-based tools and best practices, and enable data analysis to uncover insights and build useful predictive models.
Finally, the companies aim to create a seamless and secure workflow to quicken the delivery of data and insights between research and clinical domains.