Geisinger Health System www.geisinger.org has become the first healthcare organization to be connected to the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network (PennREN) http://noc.pennren.net. PennREN is a public network exchange built and managed by the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER) www.kinber.org to provide broadband connectivity, foster collaboration, and promote innovative use of digital technologies.
KINBER is a non-profit coalition of Pennsylvania’s education, research, healthcare, economic development, libraries, and public media enables data sharing cloud services and enhanced connectivity to the Internet.
KINBER’s membership includes Geisinger, Bucknell University www.bucknell.edu, Penn State University www.psu.edu, University of Pennsylvania www.upenn.edu, and University of Pittsburgh www.pitt..edu plus others.
In a recent test of the system, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh were able to send a 175GB file of de-identified genomic data over the KIMBER Member Exchange Service connection to Geisinger.
According to Raghu Metpally, PhD, a bioinformatics scientist at Geisinger’s Sigfried and Janet Weis Center for Research, “Geisinger will now be able to use genomics in research in the clinics by using a dedicated high speed data transfer system to receive data from services centers and share the data”.