Expansion to the current Islion Storage System at Redwood Data Centre Cardiff

Cardiff & Vale University Health Boards All Wales Medical Genomics Service (AWMGS) historically faced challenges with the implementation and management of high performance computing (HPC) resources, big data storage and analysis, and the volume of computational and storage resources required. Because of this AWMGS were not able to analyse and store the data generated by their next generation sequencing (NGS).

As a result, the WREN system was designed specifically for the All Wales Medical Genomics Service. WREN is hosted and operated by ARCCA technical experts to support AWMGS bioinformaticians in the delivery of nationwide clinical services to detect genetic alterations which inform a personalised diagnostics prognostic and therapeutic decisions.

The data produced from the WREN system is stored at Redwood Data Centre Cardiff. AWMGS regularly assesses the capacity and connectivity of the Data Centre with ARCCA to ensure that it has sufficient connection speed and storage capacity to support the service.

The All Wales Medical Genomics Service is now increasing sequencing capacity by procuring additional sequencers which are critical to meet the demand to expand the Welsh Health Specialist Service Committee (WHSCC) commissioned in-house testing at the pace required to deliver equitable testing for Welsh patients in comparison to other regions within the UK. By procuring additional sequencers the data storage requirement has increased and we are now finding that the Redwood Data Centre can offer additional storage capacity to support the Genomics service.

Based on this information the service needs to procure additional storage for the next 12 months urgently in order to be able to manage the sequencing data that is produced from the additional testing. A decision has been made to award ARCCA a contract for the additional hosting and support services up to a maximum value of GBP 556,239.00 including VAT.