SPHN - The BioMedIT Network: A Secure IT Platform for Research with Sensitive Human Data

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Health Informatics
• Data Science

Background:

• The Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) aims to facilitate data-driven research.
• Researchers require secure and versatile IT infrastructure for sensitive biomedical data.
• Existing research infrastructure needs enhancement for advanced data processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a secure, powerful, and versatile IT infrastructure for data-driven biomedical research.
• To ensure data privacy protection while enabling access to sensitive biomedical data.
• To lower computational boundaries for researchers in Switzerland.

Main Methods:

• Development of the BioMedIT network and nodes providing compute and storage capacity.
• Implementation of a common Information Security Policy utilizing state-of-the-art security techniques.
• Utilization of cloud computing, virtualization, compute accelerators (GPUs), big data storage, and federation technologies.

Main Results:

• The BioMedIT network provides secure data transfer, storage, management, and processing capabilities.
• BioMedIT nodes offer local and federated compute and storage capacity.
• A competitive Swiss private-cloud infrastructure is established for researchers.

Conclusions:

• The BioMedIT project successfully delivers a secure national infrastructure for sensitive biomedical data research.
• It enhances data-driven research capabilities for Swiss institutions while ensuring data privacy.
• The network supports secure and lawful processing of sensitive data through advanced technologies.