The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has officially announced a strategic collaboration with Manifold, a leader in research infrastructure for biomedical science.
According to certain reports, the stated collaboration will focus on developing a cutting-edge research platform, which is going to pack together a powerful new architecture made up of advanced capabilities, such as multi-cloud capacity, new suites of analysis technologies, and improvements to usability and accessibility. All these components will basically come together to drive impact for biomedical research everywhere.
More on that would reveal how the new platform will build upon the principles of Terra, which happens to be a trusted system for large-scale data analysis and secure collaboration. From a more practical standpoint, the solution can be expected to address the evolving demands of modern life sciences research, while simultaneously retaining Terra’s longstanding core values. The stated core values include secure sharing, global collaboration, and a steadfast commitment to responsible stewardship, thus ensuring that data providers retain full control over who is permitted to access and use their data.
As for what makes Manifold an ideal candidate for such an effort, the answer resides in its AI-powered technology, designed to eliminate manual bottlenecks in data collection, organization, governance, and analysis. Leveraging such a facility, the technology makes it possible for researchers to focus on discovery, and therefore, unlock the full potential of their data without technical barriers.
Manifold’s platform, at present, supports transformative projects at leading organizations including the Indiana University Melvin, Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Morehouse School of Medicine.
“As we look to the future, we’ve been seeking a collaborator who shares our vision for Terra and has the technical and scientific track record to help us bring powerful, collaborative data-management and analysis tools into the next decade,” said Todd Golub, Director of the Broad Institute. “Manifold’s expertise in platforms to power life sciences research makes them an ideal collaborator to create a solution that can readily anticipate and offer what the life sciences will need in the years ahead, and extend the reliability, community, and data-security principles Terra was founded on.”
Talk about the given platform on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the option to bring your own cloud. This feature allows researchers to work in alignment with their organization’s cloud strategy and access flexibility, along with a proper solution to fragmented data ecosystems.
Next up, we must dig into the promise of enhanced scalability. This translates to how the platform can seamlessly accommodate the exponential growth of biomedical data, supporting higher user volumes, more complex workflows, and massive datasets without compromising performance.
The platform also brings to you a proven approach in the context of data harmonization. Thanks to that capacity, the solution can easily ingest and harmonize diverse datasets into a research-ready environment which, in turn, would be compatible with industry standards. By doing so, it will empower data owners to retain full control over access and permissions.
Another component in play here is rooted in the assortment of purpose-built AI agents, agents who provide advanced capabilities like natural language search, cohort building, automated survival and gene expression analysis, as well as the ability to “chat” with your data.
Hold on, we still have a couple of bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon the prospect of improved data discovery. This improvement, on its part, banks upon features like configurable reports, domain-specific visualizations, and semantic search, to simplify data exploration and interpretation.
Rounding up highlights would be a mechanism dedicated towards data sharing and collaboration. Here, users can enjoy hassle-free collaboration across institutions within a secure research environment, achieving the needed adherence to data usage policies, fine-grained access controls, and comprehensive audit trails.
“It’s now becoming possible to work simultaneously across many different types of biomedical information and identify connections and insights that were out of reach just a few years ago,” said Eric S. Lander, Founding Director of the Broad Institute. “Our goal is to ensure scientists everywhere have access to the advanced tools and methods necessary to generate these insights.”
