Background:
Genomics England (“GEL”) is a wholly owned entity of The Department of Health & Social Care, set up to deliver the 100,000 Genomes Project, a flagship NHS project to sequence 100,000 whole genomes from NHS Patients with rare diseases, plus their families, as well as patients with common cancers.
Sequencing such large numbers of genomes generates enormous amounts of data. Genomics England is thus a big data driven organisation operating at scale with over 30PB of storage and 4000 compute cores collocated across physical data centres and public cloud.
Challenge:
Genomics England had significant technology delivery challenges as a result of a rapid increase in the speed and volume of data, placing an increasing demand for compute resources.
This would require a re-think in delivery strategy across all areas of the IT function and require additional resources including people, process and technology, including a much-expanded IT team; the introduction of a DevOps culture and new hybrid Datacentre solution.
Solution:
GEL needed a high-performing and efficient IT environment, Inspire People’s team delivered one from a standing start, finding the right technology and approach to support their research:
• A cloud strategy to futureproof and support the migrations of applications from legacy infrastructure
• Implemented real-time IT financials by implementing data analytics and developed highly efficient storage and HPC for the 5M Genome project
• Expanded programme of work to encompass delivering an AWS research facility within three months to support 500 external researchers working on COVID-19
• Successfully implemented an agile DevOps team, improving productivity 5-fold within a year.
Links:
https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFVzGiIYp-nRxsOTjjNUqOg/featured
https://www.england.nhs.uk/genomics/nhs-genomic-med-service/
For more information, contact David Ardley, Associate Director - Advisory & Projects at david.ardley@inspirepeople.net or call +44 (0)20 7871 8550.
