title: Computing patient data in the cloud: practical and legal considerations for genetics and genomics research in Europe and internationally creator: Molnár-Gábor, Fruzsina creator: Lück, Rupert creator: Yakneen, Sergei creator: Korbel, Jan O. subject: ddc-000 subject: 000 Generalities, Science subject: ddc-610 subject: 610 Medical sciences Medicine description: Biomedical research is becoming increasingly large-scale and international. Cloud computing enables the comprehensive integration of genomic and clinical data, and the global sharing and collaborative processing of these data within a flexibly scalable infrastructure. Clouds offer novel research opportunities in genomics, as they facilitate cohort studies to be carried out at unprecedented scale, and they enable computer processing with superior pace and throughput, allowing researchers to address questions that could not be addressed by studies using limited cohorts. A well-developed example of such research is the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, which involves the analysis of petabyte-scale genomic datasets from research centers in different locations or countries and different jurisdictions. Aside from the tremendous opportunities, there are also concerns regarding the utilization of clouds; these concerns pertain to perceived limitations in data security and protection, and the need for due consideration of the rights of patient donors and research participants. Furthermore, the increased outsourcing of information technology impedes the ability of researchers to act within the realm of existing local regulations owing to fundamental differences in the understanding of the right to data protection in various legal systems. In this Opinion article, we address the current opportunities and limitations of cloud computing and highlight the responsible use of federated and hybrid clouds that are set up between public and private partners as an adequate solution for genetics and genomics research in Europe, and under certain conditions between Europe and international partners. This approach could represent a sensible middle ground between fragmented individual solutions and a “one-size-fits-all” approach. publisher: BioMed Central date: 2017 type: Article type: info:eu-repo/semantics/article type: NonPeerReviewed format: application/pdf identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/23128/1/13073_2017_Article_449.pdf identifier: DOI: identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-231289 identifier: Molnár-Gábor, Fruzsina ; Lück, Rupert ; Yakneen, Sergei ; Korbel, Jan O. (2017) Computing patient data in the cloud: practical and legal considerations for genetics and genomics research in Europe and internationally. Genome Medicine, 9 (58). pp. 1-12. ISSN 1756-994X relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/23128/ rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess rights: Please see front page of the work (Sorry, Dublin Core plugin does not recognise license id) language: eng