The rapid spread of the Delta variant shows the need for faster identification of Covid-19 mutations. Uniting governments and medical communities in this challenge, the Global Pathogen Analysis System (GPAS), from the University of Oxford and Oracle Cloud System, is being used by organizations on virtually every continent. Institutions using the platform include the University of Montreal Hospital Center Research Centre, the Institute of Public Health Research of Chile, the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research – New South Wales Pathology and Oxford Nanopore Technologies. GPAS is also part of the Public Health England New Variant Assessment Platform.
The Global Pathogen Analysis System is offered as a free resource to help combat Covid-19 and other microbial health threats.
Built on Oxford’s Scalable Pathogen Pipeline Platform (SP3), Oracle APEX, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), the Global Pathogen Analysis System is a cloud platform that provides unified and standardized systems for analyzing and comparing genomic data sequences from SARS-CoV-2. Researchers are using the system to post pathogen data and receive complete results within minutes.
With the user’s permission, the results can be shared with participating workers around the globe in a secure environment. Comprehensive and shareable data will help public health authorities assess and plan their response by giving them valuable insight into emerging variants before they are officially designated as variants of concern.
Unite the global community of researchers on a common mission
“GPAS is the world’s first service based on industry standards, offering a standardized data stream analysis service for users in the cloud,” said Derrick Crook, Professor of Microbiology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of New York. Oxford.
“Users will be able to access, upload and process their data stream entirely under their control and receive analyzed data in just 20 minutes. If they choose to share the data, they will contribute to global data visualization that will reveal daily changes in the progress of the pandemic and how the virus is changing. This will allow continuous evaluation of the pandemic and help guide national and global interventions to modify the impact curve of the virus.”
