Disruption to the System: How Open Data is changing Genomic Research

Genetic research takes an important role in the drive for more personalized medicine by providing a deeper look into the genetic makeup of various diseases.However, these data driven analysis require thousands of subjects, thus driving the cost into millions of US Dollars.

Thus, only a handful of institutions were able to effectively do large scale genetic analysis on diseases such as Diabetes and Schizophrenia. While summary statistics of these analyses are freely shared among researchers and used it subsequent analysis, scientist at smaller institutions hardly ever have the chance of applying novel ideas to the raw data.

However, all this changed with the introduction of the UK BioBank, a database with genomic, biochemical, and neuroimaging information on over 500,000 subjects. Interestingly, the data was made freely available to all research institutions around the world. Without any majore restrictions. Hence, changing the landscape of how we do genetic research forever.

Within this talk I aim to show how open data changed genomic research. How it accelerated research progress and how it changed (or not changed) the power structure among institutions and scientists.