The Biomedical Research Hub: a federated platform for patient research data

Area of Science:

• Biomedical informatics
• Data science
• Cloud computing

Background:

• Growing use of public cloud platforms in biomedical research.
• Increasing adoption of persistent digital identifiers for research data.
• Need for federated systems to manage diverse, independently operated data resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and operate a cloud-based federated system for managing, analyzing, and sharing patient data.
• To enable research data sharing while respecting individual governance rules.
• To create the Biomedical Research Hub (BRH).

Main Methods:

• Built a cloud-based federated system using core framework services.
• Framework services include authentication, authorization, FAIR data assessment, and data import/export.
• Integrated multiple data resources and analysis workspaces.

Main Results:

• The Biomedical Research Hub (BRH) provides access to over 6 petabytes (PB) of research data.
• Data is aggregated from multiple data commons, involving over 400,000 research participants.
• The system supports applications accessing data from one or more federated resources.

Conclusions:

• Established a foundation for federating data from independently operated resources using FAIR data principles.
• The BRH supports the development of applications that leverage distributed biomedical data.
• Cloud-based federated systems are viable for advancing collaborative biomedical research.