Full article published in Science 10 June 2016 'A federated ecosystem for sharing genomic, clinical data'

A FEDERATED DATA ECOSYSTEM.

 The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) was established in 2013 to enable responsible and effective sharing of genomic and clinical data in a way that is as simple as using the World Wide Web. GA4GH, which now brings together hundreds of individuals and organisations, was built on the hypothesis that the data underlying genomic medicine must be federated. That is, whereas data may be distributed across many databases and computers around the world, they must be virtually connected through software interfaces that allow seamless, authorized access.

 In contrast to large centralised data repositories, a federated system will allow legal data control to remain within the originating jurisdiction (see the figure 1 below). International consortia such as the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) have already adopted federated databases because the model allows local databases to maintain autonomy.