American Heart Association, AWS Launch Heart Disease Cloud Marketplace

November 14, 2016

By Bio-IT World Staff

November 14, 2016 | The American Heart Association (AHA) announced a milestone in its strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS): the launch of a global, secure cloud-based data marketplace for cardiovascular diseases. The AHA Precision Medicine Platform will include an array of curated datasets, that are centrally stored, easily searched and accessible, and managed on the AWS cloud. 

The platform will enable researchers and clinicians to aggregate and analyze a breadth and depth of data including longitudinal cohorts, proteomic, genomic, and gene expression data using a precision medicine approach to uncover critical cardiovascular disease insights that translate into medical innovations that positively impact millions of lives, the AHA said in a statement. The Platform will integrate data from clinical trials, long-running epidemiologic studies, clinical registries, and real-time health data acquired through wearable devices and technology.

Several initial healthcare and research organizations are leading the way as data contributors to the AHA Precision Medicine Platform including: AstraZeneca, Cedars Sinai Heart Institute, Dallas Heart Study, the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, the International Stroke Genetics Consortium, and Stanford Cardiovascular Institute.

“The Platform will harness the power of big data to revolutionize the way cardiovascular research is performed and speed the promise of precision cardiovascular medicine,” said AHA CEO Nancy Brown in the same statement. “The AHA remains steadfast in its commitment to eliminate the tragic global burden cardiovascular disease places on individuals, families, healthcare systems, and entire nations by mapping scientific discovery to the dramatic advances in biomedical research and technology innovation.”

AHA hopes that a cloud-based infrastructure will link cardiovascular researchers to more easily find solutions for patients.

“AHA and AWS bring unique strengths and complementary expertise to the Precision Medicine Data Marketplace with AWS offering the immense computational and analytical power necessary to manage the information ecosystem of this magnitude,” said Teresa Carlson, Vice President Worldwide Public Sector, AWS. “We are very excited to work with AHA to quickly bring resources and advancements to patients more rapidly and to make these scientific discoveries a reality.”

To spark collaboration, AHA is providing access to the Precision Medicine Platform through a series of grants. AWS is providing grant recipients free access to computational cloud storage and analysis as part of the AHA data grant portfolio.  Grant submissions are in progress and the first round of recipients will be announced in April 2017. More information on submission deadlines for the Data Grant Portfolio can be found at http://institute.heart.org.