Illumina Offers $48,000 Personal Genome Sequencing–How Will Data be Handled?
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A depiction of the structure of DNA
Illumina will offer a service to sequence a person’s genome for $48,000 (a doctor’s prescription is required). Note that this is only the sequencing and not the actual analysis of that sequence data. The consumer must choose from a few different providers to do the actual analysis of the genome sequence data. Currently, the representation of a human genome as Illumina is proposing (30-fold coverage of your DNA sequence) would require the transfer of terabytes of data to the company doing the analysis. Of course, there are various parts to “analysis” so depending on where Illumina stops and the other companies take over, this actually could be a lot less data (e.g., gigabytes).
So this raises at least a couple of possible challenges for Illumina:
- How will the data be transferred?
- How will the data be secured?
Transferring the Data
One could see that data transfer of on the order terabytes of data would not be a problem if the turnaround time is long enough. Although if the service becomes more and more popular, scaling may be a problem (or at least synchronizing network abilities with analysis providers). Nevertheless, will Illumina establish encrypted network connections with the consumer’s/doctor’s chosen analysis provider? Will they transfer the data encrypted on external hard drives? If on external hard drives, how will tracking of the multiple pieces be tracked?
Securing the Data
I’m assuming the security/encryption questions may have answers based off of current electronic health records implementations although I’m not sure if electronic patient information systems are typically interconnected between different health care organizations. That is, aren’t these systems usually secured/confined within the network of a particular health care organization? If it is placed on external hard drives and shipped, would the encryption of terabytes of data per patient be challenging?
