The Roadmap of the 1+Million Genomes Initiative shows how to reach the target of over million sequenced genomes by the end of 2022

The Roadmap for the implementation of the 1+Million Genomes Initiative, adopted in early 2020, is now easily accessible on-line. 1+Million Genomes Initiative is signed by 23 European countries and has the target of having over one million genomes sequenced by the end of 2022. Further goal is to set up a collaboration mechanism with the potential to improve disease prevention, allow for more personalized treatments and provide a sufficient scale for innovative, clinically impactful research.

A clear strategy forward: the 1+MG Roadmap 2020-2022
To meet the target of having over one million genomes sequenced by the end of 2022, in February 2020, the signatories of the 1+ Million Genomes initiative adopted the ‘1+MG Roadmap 2020-2022’. The Roadmap has been established to provide a clear perspective for tangible outcomes over the course of the next three years and can be easily discovered in the new brochure.

Federated Secure Cross-border Technical Infrastructure
The Horizon 2020 project “Beyond 1 Million Genomes” will support and coordinate the implementation of the Roadmap in the coming years by leading up to an agreement on the infrastructure, the legal guidance and the best practices to enable this access.

CSC – IT Center for Science co-leads work package in this project focusing on Federated Secure Cross-border Technical Infrastructure. This work package collects information across use cases, as for Rare diseases, Cancer, Polygenic diseases, Pathogens i.e. COVID-19. Tommi Nyrönen (CSC) and Ilkka Lappalainen (CSC) are the leaders of the work with the goals and objectives as follows:

• Provide standards for interoperability to facilitate interfaces required for cross-border secure data services
• Facilitate security-by-design on proposed data services, e.g. use of synthetic data sets for testing
• Promote global standards on authorized access to national data
• Increase European capacity to manage sensitive data

- EU 1 million genomes initiative is a key driver for the development of technologies for secure management and processing of sensitive data for health use cases. In the B1MG, leading solutions emerging from e.g. national genome centers and EU framework project can be brought for the signatory member state decision making in a coordinated and open way, says Tommi Nyrönen, the program director of the ELIXIR Node in Finland.

Read more: The Roadmap of the 1+Million Genomes Initiative is now clearly illustrated in a new brochure