The CNAG is one of 148 partners of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), an alliance of the world’s leading biomedical research institutions, healthcare providers, information technology and life science companies, funders of research, and disease and patient advocacy organizations, announced progress since the group’s formation and plans for future work at a partner meeting that was held at the Wellcome Trust in London on March 4th 2014. The Global Alliance aims to accelerate the world-wide effort to responsibly aggregate and analyze large amounts of genomic and clinical information – seeking best practices where they exist, and developing new approaches where needed – in order to advance the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment for cancer, inherited diseases, infectious diseases, and drug responses.

The Alliance grows to 148 Partners and moves forward on data sharing
Almost two hundred of the world’s leading experts in healthcare, biomedical research, technology, ethics, and patient advocacy met for the first face-to-face GA4GH partner meeting. The CNAG was represented by Sergi Beltran, the Bioinformatics Analysis group leader. The key challenge partners addressed is that while a wealth of genome sequence information is set to be gathered, such information becomes interpretable only when compared across many individuals. Yet existing data sets sit in separate silos, with incompatible methods and under complex regulation, creating barriers to such comparison and possible discovery. The meeting focused on coordinating the development of harmonized approaches and interoperable methods to enable learning and make it easier for all to explore the transformational potential of genomic data.