Big Data strategy to revolutionise infectious disease diagnosis

Public Health England have drawn together advanced data tools to better their diagnosis and surveillance of life-threatening infectious diseases. The Department of Health’s executive agency Public Health England is using a big data storage system inspired by DataDirect Networks (DDN), an industry leader in data storage solutions with a varied and global customer base. PHE’s new system, built alongside computer solutions provider OCF, is now supported by a ‘high-performance server cluster,’ and will rapidly analyse genome sequences, supporting the diagnosis and treatment of viral, bacterial, fungal, and parasitic diseases. The initiative goes some way to meeting Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘100,000 Genome Project’ promise, made in late 2012, to identify and analyse aggressive pathogens in 100,000 patients with an infectious disease. The information could then be used to accurately predict disease outbreaks, allowing PHE to provide targeted and cost-effective public health interventions. Infectious diseases of particular concern in the UK include the notorious Norovirus,...