B1MG project - developing infrastructure for cross border access to personalised medicine data

B1MG (Beyond 1 Million Genomes), a new ELIXIR-coordinated project funded by Horizon 2020 has been launched. The project’s purpose is to support the implementation of the declaration of cooperation ‘Towards access to at least 1 million sequenced genomes in the EU by 2022', known as the 1+ Million Genomes initiative (1+MG).

22 signatory countries work together to ensure that the objectives are met by 2022, to ultimately improve disease prevention, personalised treatment and clinical research. 

B1MG project will drive the development of European infrastructure for federated and secure cross-border access to personalised medicine data by:

• Engaging local, regional, national and European stakeholders to define the requirements for cross-border access to genomics and personalised medicine data
• Translating requirements for data quality, standards, technical infrastructure, and ethical, legal and social implications into technical specifications and implementation guidelines that captures European best practice
• Driving adoption and support long-term operation by organisations at a local, regional, national and European level by providing guidance on phased development (via the B1MG maturity level model), and a methodology for economic evaluation

The three-year project will have a significant impact on society, as it will offer clear guidance to implement personalised medicine, at a local, regional and national scale. Personalised medicine, which considers people’s genetic makeup, can yield notable socio-economic benefits:

• More efficient national health systems
• Faster and more accurate diagnosis
• Better health
• Better quality of life
• Increased life expectancy 

CSC – IT Center for Science co-leads work package in this project focusing on - Federated Secure Cross-border Technical Infrastructure. This work package will be collecting information across use cases, as for Rare diseases, Cancer, Polygenic diseases, Pathogens i.e. COVID-19.  The WP´s goals and objectives are:

• Provide standards for interoperability to facilitate interfaces required for cross-border secure data services 
• Facilitate security-by-design on proposed data services, e.g. use of synthetic data sets for testing
• Promote global standards on authorized access to national data
• Increase European capacity to manage sensitive data

Tommi Nyrönen (CSC) and Ilkka Lappalainen (CSC) the leaders of the WP4 work package, how do you see the possibilities of the B1MG project as a driver for infrastructure and interoperability?

– B1MG is essential to prepare Europe for integrating genomics as part of the healthcare and to facilitate secondary use of these data for research. We have a short window for success – and B1MG is just what we need to collect all the experts within Europe and beyond to give us the options for European roadmap that can then be implemented nationally to host the data sets but importantly networked together to provide relevant information for cancer, common, rare and infectious diseases across the Europe.

Source: b1mg-project.eu/
https://elixir-europe.org/news/elixir-launches-new-eu-project-b1mg