A semi-automatic methodology for analysing distributed and private biobanks

Abstract

Privacy issues limit the analysis and cross-exploration of most distributed and private biobanks, often raised by the multiple dimensionality and sensitivity of the data associated with access restrictions and policies. These characteristics prevent collaboration between entities, constituting a barrier to emergent personalized and public health challenges, namely the discovery of new druggable targets, identification of disease-causing genetic variants, or the study of rare diseases. In this paper, we propose a semi-automatic methodology for the analysis of distributed and private biobanks. The strategies involved in the proposed methodology efficiently enable the creation and execution of unified genomic studies using distributed repositories, without compromising the information present in the datasets. We apply the methodology to a case study in the current Covid-19, ensuring the combination of the diagnostics from multiple entities while maintaining privacy through a completely identical procedure. Moreover, we show that the methodology follows a simple, intuitive, and practical scheme.