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Inside DNAnexus

Product updates, industry insights, opinions and references. From the team powering the Genomics Revolution.

New Research Analysis Platform Enables UK Biobank To Exponentially Increase Size and Scale of World’s Most Comprehensive Biomedical Database

As the scope and data demands of the UK Biobank biomedical database gets bigger, we’re helping UK Biobank to meet its audacious ambitions. 

The latest improvement is a new cloud-based Research Analysis Platform (RAP), which will exponentially increase the scale and accessibility of the world’s most comprehensive biomedical database. Watch the short explainer video to learn more. 

Since 2006, UK Biobank has been on a mission to unleash the imaginations of the global research community to go further and improve human health. This project is another example of their dedication to democratizing access to this rich, multi-dimensional data resource.  

DNAnexus shares this vision.  We understand that delivering on UK Biobank’s promise of improving human health requires overcoming the challenges around scale and diversity of datasets, the need for integrated multimodal analytics and comprehensive analysis tools, stringent controls on data security and regulatory compliance, and the critical need for collaboration globally and across institutional firewalls.

That’s why we partnered with UK Biobank to build a scalable, secure, and collaborative Research Analysis Platform to accelerate the speed and scale of health-related research.

Enabled by DNAnexus technology and powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), RAP provides approved researchers with the ability to access and analyze the 11 petabytes of data in the UK Biobank database from anywhere in the world. 

It also enables easier collaboration between researchers within the same team, or on the other side of the planet. Users can leverage a valuable library of tools for analyzing genomic and clinical data. 

And as the UK Biobank grows, the platform is designed to grow with it, a vital requirement as the resource is expected to surpass 40 petabytes of data by 2025. To put that number into perspective, it would take over a century of continuous viewing to consume 40 petabyte’s worth of high definition 4k movies!

We are proud to partner with UK Biobank on this landmark initiative that combines our leading biomedical informatics platform and insight tools with UK Biobank’s genomics and clinical datasets. This global collaboration brings us one step closer to accomplishing our vision of democratizing data access to drive innovations in research that profoundly impact patient lives.   

Learn more about the new UK Biobank Research Analysis Platform. If you aren’t an approved researcher, read more about UK Biobank and apply for access here.

About DNAnexus

DNAnexus the leader in biomedical informatics and data management, has created the global network for genomics and other biomedical data, operating in 33 countries including North America, Europe, China, Australia, South America, and Africa. The secure, scalable, and collaborative DNAnexus Platform helps thousands of researchers across a spectrum of industries — biopharmaceutical, bioagricultural, sequencing services, clinical diagnostics, government, and research consortia — accelerate their genomics programs.

The DNAnexus team is made up of experts in computational biology and cloud computing who work with organizations to tackle some of the most exciting opportunities in human health, making it easier—and in many cases feasible—to work with genomic data. With DNAnexus, organizations can stay a step ahead in leveraging genomics to achieve their goals. The future of human health is in genomics. DNAnexus brings it all together.