By Diagnostics World Staff
June 28, 2016 | WuXi NextCODE’s genomics platform is now available on Microsoft Azure. The platform has previously been available on Amazon Web Services and Huawei in China.
“Launching our genomics platform on Microsoft Azure marks another exciting step in our development as the standard platform on which precision medicine will be built and delivered,” said Hannes Smarason, chief operating officer of WuXi NextCODE in a statement. “Microsoft Corp. is a leader in delivering powerful cloud technology. We are thrilled to work with Microsoft experts and customers worldwide to use the genome to benefit patients.”
WuXi NextCODE claims to be the only platform that makes it possible to use large-scale genomic data in full resolution over an ordinary internet connection. That means that a pediatrician in the Midwest can send the DNA of a rare disease patient to be sequenced and uploaded to the WuXi NextCODE system on the Azure cloud platform; a clinical geneticist in Boston can use WuXi NextCODE’s clinical interface to identify the variant causing the illness; and the doctor, the geneticist and the parents can then review the entire process step-by-step in real time. They can see the child’s genome sequence in the context of global reference data in full resolution on their desktops a thousand miles apart, without ever having to send big data files back and forth online or on disk.
“Applying genomics to medicine is a big data challenge, and WuXi NextCODE is meeting this challenge with a scalable solution on Microsoft Azure,” said David Heckerman, distinguished scientist, Microsoft Genomics. “We are pleased to bring the power and reach of the WuXi NextCODE platform to Microsoft Azure as an integral part of our growing genomics ecosystem.”