Amazon Web Services (AWS) has agreed to provide £8 million ($10.3m) in cloud computing storage credits to biomedical database UK Biobank.
This will be matched by the UK government, bringing the total cloud storage spend to $20.6m.
UK Biobank stores data that helps researchers develop new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases like dementia, Parkinson's, diabetes, and cancer.
The data it houses includes in-depth genetic, health, and lifestyle information from half a million UK volunteers, which can be accessed by researchers worldwide. In total, Biobank has 30 petabytes of data.
The investment was announced on July 25 by Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle and will enable Biobank to securely store and handle its massive amount of data. Biobank will also have access to AWS' AI and machine learning services.
Kyle said of the offer from AWS: "UK Biobank is helping researchers around the world tackle some of the biggest health problems facing humanity – from dementia to heart disease – by putting an unprecedented scale of information at their fingertips.
"This research is helping us develop the treatments that will improve and hopefully prolong all our lives. This contribution from Amazon Web Services – matched by government – will mean that UK Biobank has the cloud infrastructure it needs, to underpin such a vast undertaking. This is just the start of our plan to work hand-in-hand with industry and academia, to harness the power of life sciences to grow our economy and boost healthcare."
Professor Sir Rory Collins, CEO and principal investigator of UK Biobank, added: "This means vital data can be accessed by researchers from less wealthy countries, or who are starting out in research, as well as those at large universities, charities, and companies. By bringing together so many researchers, with different viewpoints and questions, to investigate the data, we have a much better chance of helping improve the lives of everyone, everywhere."
In October 2023, a public philanthropic consortium was founded to fund Biobank, with initial funding from Eric Schmidt, Ken Griffen, and the UK government for a total of £32m. This brings the total funding to £48 million ($61.82m)
John Davies, director of the UK Public Sector at Amazon Web Services, said: "UK Biobank has the largest dataset of whole genome sequences in the world, with data from an aging cohort that is almost 20 years old.
"In using AWS, UK Biobank is able to store this vast amount of health data securely and scale up the data platform quickly and easily as more data is added in the future. Using cloud infrastructure to store and access data will also help UK Biobank unlock the benefits of more advanced digital capabilities such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will further speed up research advancements in healthcare."
