About the Customer
This public health agency works 24/7 to protect the United States from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, this agency fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.
The Challenge
COVID-19 has become endemic and it will need regular tracking to ensure an appropriate public health response. Public health lab jurisdictions are responsible for such monitoring and analysis in the United States. Each of these labs receive the positive COVID tests, which allows them to sequence them for further analysis and determination of which variants are developing where. There was a need to collaborate across labs and states to get a full picture of what was happening with the spread of the disease and variant detection.
The Solution
Onix set up Google Cloud to enable this public health agency to provide access to Terra.bio for all state public health labs in order to collaborate in real-time on data analytics for COVID variant detection. Terra.bio, developed by the Broad Institute and Verily, is a platform for analyzing genomics data at scale. Onix has supported Terra.bio and Broad for many years and provided OnSpend to track spend across Terra accounts, so spending can be monitored for each lab.
The Results
The agency is able to provide access to any public health laboratories in the United States to adopt Terra for pathogen genomics and biosurveillance. The partnership is primarily focused on the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the moment, but its long-term scope includes any other infectious disease agents where a genomics approach is appropriate.
