Information Life-Cycle Management at the Erasmus Medical Center

Information Lifecycle Management at the Erasmus University Medical Centre. Collaboratively managing digital data for care, research and education using the international development of the GLOBE 3D Genome Viewer and Erasmus Computing Grid as catalyzing initiatives. The Rotterdam-based Erasmus MC is with 1,200 patient beds and 10,000 employees the largest biomedical research and healthcare institution in the Netherlands and one of the biggest in Europe. Erasmus MC witnessed a steep increase in data volumes and subsequent computing and archiving needs for its care, research and education processes. The continuous advances of healthcare imaging and other data in combination with the unusually long archiving lifecycles propose a complex availability challenge. Addressing this challenge requires a collaborative interdisciplinary effort of Clinical, Research, Education and IT departments across Erasmus MC. Fulfilling the healthcare vision of the 21st century for a higher quality of life in our societies necessitates the crossing of the institutional border by alliances between international hospital partners and industry vendors. The GLOBE 3D Genome Viewer and the Erasmus Computing Grid are two new major catalyzing initiatives at Erasmus MC towards achieving this 21st century vision. The GLOBE 3D Genome Viewer is the first system- biology oriented genome viewer necessary to access, present, annotate, and simulate the holistic genome complexity in a unique gateway towards a real understanding, educative presentation and curative manipulation planning. The Erasmus Computing Grid is with its projected 13,000 CPUs and a capacity of ~20 Tera flops one of the biggest desktop computing grids in the world supplying the computing power needed for research, education and healthcare. Erasmus MC likes to call for collaboration on the GLOBE 3D Genome Viewer for visualizing the tremendously complex genome landscapes and biological networks in a single easy comprehensible platform necessary to achieve the challenge posed by the upcoming of the complete sequencing of individual genomes and thus personalized medicine.