I-Corps: Commercialization Investigation of the Navipoint Clinical Genomics Platform

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This I-Corps project team's technology is a genomics analysis platform, Globus Genomics, that can: electronically move large genomic data sets, allow researchers to define custom analytical workflows using a graphical user interface, execute their workflows on genomic data sets at scale, and generate valuable research results which help advance the understanding of the genetic basis of complex diseases. Genetic and genomic analysis is growing exponentially as part of the rapidly evolving frontier of precision medicine. Researchers and clinicians alike are turning to genomics to help guide diagnosis, drug discovery, and treatment in order to combat a variety of diseases in a much more targeted and effective manner. Time-to-diagnosis and time-to-treatment place a premium on removing end-to-end bottlenecks. Given the increasing scale (and costs) of analysis - performance optimization must also be combined with cost optimization. And, with a rapidly evolving state-of-the-art in terms of algorithms, applications and technologies, critical expertise must be assembled to deliver highly advanced, well integrated, and easy-to-use solutions. Current approaches have proven to be too rigid, slow, complex and costly. They require substantial investments of time, money and hard to find expertise, that goes well beyond the capabilities of many clinical organizations. This I-Corps team seeks to provide a flexible, scalable and optimized genomics analysis solution in order to meet these critical requirements for diagnostic labs in hospital settings, genetic testing service providers, translational medicine institutes and pharmaceutical R&D groups. With this type of platform in place, health delivery organizations can provide more targeted, timely and effective treatment to their patients suffering from a broad range of heritable diseases and disorders. The goal of the proposed project efforts include getting a much more in-depth understanding of the prioritized areas of needs and detailed customer requirements. This will be largely driven by breadth and depth of customer interviews along with an evolving formulation of the team's business model and product design. With this understanding, the team will embark on an iterative development effort to gain rapid customer feedback and work towards the definition of a minimum viable product. The team plans to work closely with both health care organizations and genetic testing companies in the discovery and initial deployment stages. The potential contribution of the proposed platform will include: much more rapid genomic analysis capabilities, improved time-to-diagnosis and time-to-treatment in a clinical setting, and an intuitive user experience to allow diagnosticians and clinical practitioners to focus on patient care instead of software complexities and localized computer hardware limitations.