In the current precision healthcare focused, Big Data era, countries with the highest chances of success in using molecular information in clinical and public health applications are those with extensive population-based longitudinal clinical data linked to high quality biospecimens. Access to expert informatic and analytic resources, particularly applied AI, are also critical. The capacity to create and maintain extensive human biospecimen collections linked to rich phenotypic data is an essential ‘Big Data’ precursor to molecular medicine and precision healthcare, and to enable industry partnerships that develop and implement new therapies and health care solutions.
We are building new national infrastructure for biomedical research to address these needs. The Biospecimen and Data Linkage Resource (BIOLINKeR) will take existing SA biospecimen banking resources, integrate them into a single new and cohesive core platform, and greatly expand their capacities and potential impact through linkage to clinical and other administrative datasets. New partnerships with SA Pathology will allow ~6.5M historical biospecimens to be visible and accessible for the first time. BIOLINKeR will provide the potential for national access to SA biospecimen resources and facilitate collaboration and research into national priority diseases across the life course. Integration with the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML) will allow the application of artificial intelligence to both operational and analytic problems.