When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, genomic sequencing of pathogens was only just being adopted by many state and local public health labs across the US. But to detect new variants and other important changes in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, labs needed tools for secure, scalable, robust genome data management and analysis right away.
As it turned out, software engineering teams at the Broad Institute had already created a solution — Terra, an open, secure, and collaborative environment created in a collaboration between Broad, Verily, and Microsoft, where users can analyze and share biomedical and public health data.
