Establishing a common federated infrastructure for secure API-driven multi-party federation on clinico-genomic cohorts

可信研究环境（TRE）是研究人员访问和分析敏感数据的安全空间。它们有助于防止未经授权的访问和/或从去识别数据中重新识别个人。许多研究机构和数据提供商都有自己的TREs，但他们的TREs目前无法相互“对话”。TREs交谈的能力被称为联邦。即使研究人员被允许使用两个单独的TRE中保存的数据，一起分析它们仍然需要在单个TRE中组合。对于大型数据集（如全基因组序列），这是具有挑战性和昂贵的，并且可能会延迟新的发现。我们提出了一个英国第一次展示联邦的基因组数据桥接的TREs的NIHR剑桥生物医学研究中心和英国基因组学。两者都包含来自患者的完全同意的临床基因组数据的丰富、安全、受管理的来源。在查询两个单独的TREs中的数据以找到具有某些特征的个体后，将在两个环境中运行联合分析，并将结果合并在单独的安全云环境中。这意味着没有原始数据会移动，只有结果会移动。将开发和共享联合TRE系统的新标准。从该项目中学习将为研究委员会与临床基因组数据的合作带来前所未有的可能性，可能会带来具有长期公共利益的新发现。

Trusted Research Environments (TREs) are secure spaces for researchers to access and analyse sensitive data. They help prevent unauthorised access and/or re-identification of individuals from de-identified data. Many research institutions and data providers have their own TREs, but their TREs currently cannot “talk” to each other. The ability for TREs to talk is known as federation. Even where researchers are allowed to use data held in two separate TREs, analysing them together would still require their combination within a single TRE. This is challenging and costly with large datasets, like whole genome sequences, and can delay new discoveries. We propose a UK first demonstration of federation of genomic data by bridging the TREs of the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and Genomics England. Both contain rich, secure, governed sources of fully consented clinical-genomic data from patients.After querying the data within the two separate TREs to find individuals with certain characteristics, a joint analysis will be run within both environments, and the results combined in a separate secure cloud environment. This means that no original data will move, only results.New standards for federated TRE systems will be developed and shared. Learning from the project will unlock unprecedented possibilities for collaborations with clinical-genomic data across the research councils, potentially leading to new discoveries with long term public benefit.