The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has announced a £16 million investment in cloud storage to support the UK Biobank biomedical database.
The UK Government is to provide £8 million and has reached an agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the company to provide cloud computing credits worth another £8 million – which can also be used in other services such as AI and machine learning – as part of the activities of a public philanthropic consortium set up last year to support the Biobank.
This brings the total backing from the consortium to £50 million.
DSIT said that UK Biobank is the world’s most advanced source of data for health research, helping the life sciences sector to transform healthcare for people across the UK and worldwide.
It is a database of in-depth genetic, health and lifestyle information from half a million UK volunteers. Researchers worldwide can apply to access its de-identified and secure data, and are using it for research in areas including detecting cardiac disease earlier, to developing tests for Alzheimer’s.
The data is already accessible, securely and worldwide, for approved researchers on the UK Biobank Research Analysis platform, which is hosted on AWS and enabled by DNAnexus.
Unprecedented scale of information
Science Secretary Peter Kyle said: “UK Biobank is helping researchers around the world tackle some of the biggest health problems facing humanity – from dementia to heart disease – by putting an unprecedented scale of information at their fingertips.
“This research is helping us develop the treatments that will improve and hopefully prolong all our lives.
“This contribution from Amazon Web Services – matched by government – will mean that UK Biobank has the cloud infrastructure it needs, to underpin such a vast undertaking. This is just the start of our plan to work hand-in-hand with industry and academia, to harness the power of life sciences to grow our economy and boost healthcare.”
Scope to scale up
John Davies, director, UK public sector at AWS, said: “In using AWS, UK Biobank is able to store this vast amount of health data securely, and scale up the data platform quickly and easily, as more data is added in the future.
“Using cloud infrastructure to store and access data will also help UK Biobank unlock the benefits of more advanced digital capabilities such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will further speed up research advancements in healthcare.”
DSIT said that UK Biobank’s database is regularly augmented with new data, such as a recent addition of the largest ever set of whole genome sequencing data, the largest ever proteomic dataset, and the ongoing results of the world’s largest imaging study of whole body scanning. All of this data will enable researchers to open up new ways to investigate disease mechanisms, particularly for common diseases of older and middle age, from depression and anxiety to coronary heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis.
