Case study ClinGenics A micro-enterprise

Implementing extra security measures for accessing genomic sequence and personal data from a bioinformatics platform-software pipeline.

ClinGenics work is based on EMA – Exome Management Application - a bioinformatics platform-software pipeline, coupled to expert curation for the evaluation and reporting of actionable genomic variants. The EMA pipeline software provides 6 types of variant data interpretation services, plus a dedicated custom variant analysis upon request. The company handles human DNA sequence variants, human phenotype and disease related info, anonymized demographic data and technical experimental data. ClinGenics maintains an internal database containing user/customer-related information submitted during registration.

Envisioned set of services:

Although all proband/patient related data submitted by the users are totally anonymous, without any type of personal identifiers, bearing in mind that genomic sequence data constitute per se sensitive and precious personal data, ClinGenics wishes to have further layers of security regarding the access of data stored in the proband database module of the EMA pipeline. Not relying solely on anonymization, SENTINEL envisages implementing extra security measures, for example a more secure user login process, scanning for the presence of any personally identifiable information (PII) during the submission process, specific cyber security protection of all stored data, etc. and to generally put in place appropriated systems that limit any type of unauthorized access to the data.