October 29, 2014
Growing and Diverse Alliance Advances Human Health by Enabling Responsible Genomic Data Sharing
Health informatics company Aridhia announced today that it has joined as an Organisational Member of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), an international coalition dedicated to improving human health by maximising the potential of genomic medicine through effective and responsible data sharing. Aridhia is the latest to join the diverse group of over 140 of the world’s leading research institutions, healthcare providers, information technology and life science companies, and disease and patient advocacy organisations.
Aridhia develops technology and capability that supports the management of chronic diseases through the use of biomedical informatics and analytics, and its data sharing platform and analytical workspace, AnalytiXagility, enables users to link and analyse complex data sets. The platform underpins numerous collaborations with governments, health organisations, and research and academic institutions, including the Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre, a world-class centre that brings together experts from academia, industry and the NHS in Scotland to implement a biomedical informatics service to aid clinical and translational research and enable stratified medicine.
As a member of GA4GH, Aridhia will offer important expertise to identify and disseminate best practices, and establish a common framework of approaches to enable responsible data sharing. Aridhia will also be working within the Clinical Working Group to enable compatible, readily accessible, and scalable approaches for sharing clinical data and linking genomic data.
“We are fundamentally committed to improving human health, and joined the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health to achieve this vision by working alongside diverse, world-leading institutions and individuals to enable data sharing that benefits science and medicine throughout the world,” said Rodrigo Barnes, Chief Technology Officer at Aridhia. “The team at Aridhia are experts in linking and analysing large data sets, and are eager to join with other GA4GH members to promote innovation, develop cutting-edge approaches to research and biomedicine, and accelerate data sharing efforts.”
GA4GH members are focused on promoting the highest standards for ethics and harmonised approaches to enable the responsible, voluntary, and secure sharing of genomic and clinical data. Since its founding in 2013, GA4GH has released several major products, including a regulatory Framework to guide the responsible sharing of genomic and health-related data and a GA4GH Genomics API to streamline specific technical aspects of data sharing and allow for more seamless exchange globally.
“With the efforts of Aridhia, the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health will continue to collaborate on ideas, identify and establish best practices, and enable interoperability,” said Peter Goodhand, Executive Director of GA4GH. “As an Alliance which formed just over one year ago, we are excited to continue to add diverse and notable stakeholders like Aridhia to our effort.”
After GA4GH adopted a Constitution in September 2014, Aridhia and over 140 other organisations that had originally signed a Letter of Intent quickly transitioned to full Organisational Members of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health.
NOTES TO EDITOR
About Aridhia
Aridhia is a world-leading health informatics company developing technology that supports the management of chronic diseases, personalised medicine and biomedical research through the use of biomedical informatics and analytics. Operating internationally on chronic disease management projects in Kuwait, Australia, England and Scotland, Aridhia works closely with governments, health organisations, research collaborations and academic institutions.
Aridhia was co-founded in 2001 by Dr David Sibbald a software entrepreneur, philanthropist and Vice-President of UK UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund; and Professor Andrew Morris who is Chief Scientist for Health in Scotland and recently took up the position as Professor of Medicine, Director of the Institute of Population Heath Sciences and Informatics and Vice-Principal of the University for Data Science at the University of Edinburgh.
Based in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Aridhia are made up of a multi-disciplinary team of 48, data scientists, clinicians, computer scientists, software developers and healthcare experts.
Aridhia’s Projects
Aridhia’s collaborative data science platform and safe haven, AnalytiXagility, is the platform that underpins the world-leading Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre (SMS-IC). The platform is also pivotal to Aridhia’s recent win of the SBRI-funded competition led by Genomics England to enable industrial scale annotation and instrumentation from many different sequencing pipelines.
About the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health
GA4GH is an international, non-profit alliance formed to help accelerate the potential of genomic medicine to advance human health. Bringing together leading, global organisations working in healthcare, research, disease and patient advocacy, life science, and information technology, Members in the Global Alliance are working together to create a common framework of standards and harmonized approaches to enable the responsible, voluntary, and secure sharing of genomic and clinical data. Learn more at: genomicsandhealth.org.
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