DNA HIVE is developing a Federated Ecosystem for Analytics and Standardization Technologies (FEAST) as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Biomedical Data Fabric (BDF) Toolbox program. FEAST is an innovative data virtualization approach that enables location-agnostic, secure and semantically harmonized access to healthcare and biomedical data for analysis without the need to move data or alter existing ecosystems. FEAST provides a capability to analyze all datasets across different clinical systems and laboratories without moving data out of clinical systems, without violating HIPAA privacy rules, and maintaining the highest level of security. Biomedical and clinical data is fragmented, non-standardized, and moving linked data from multiple modalities to a central location for analysis poses prohibitive regulatory, cybersecurity, and privacy hurdles. However, ARPA-H has funded a FEAST federated data project that is designed to address those exact challenges.
- Instead of moving data to algorithms in computation nodes, it moves the algorithm to the data within different organizations.
- Instead of requesting data harmonization in different clinical systems, FEAST standardizes data on the fly.
- Instead of using open personal health information directly, it uses dynamic encryption mechanisms and makes data visible only where the data belongs.
FEAST enables AI modules and bioinformatics tools to jump from site to site and use the data locally to develop robust models that are inclusive of large number of patients across different data modalities. This paradigm is called Motile Intelligence© (MI) and has been implemented by ARPA-H BDF funding to enable AI access to datasets in such scenarios where data is fragmented and not harmonized. Currently, there are 7 clinical and academic organizations participating in FEAST network that provide real-time access to tens of millions of patient level RWDs. Those include:
- Weill Cornell Medical and New York Presbyterian Hospital system
- The George Washington University and GWU Hospital system
- Georgetown University and MedStar clinical system
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center
- Kaiser Permanente
- National Cancer Institute
- European Bioinformatics Institute
ARPA-H BDF Toolbox awardees | ARPA-H
FEAST Announcement (PDF)