Currently the huge and fast increasing Genomic Market lacks of a standard for what concerns the file format. Different products, both commercial or open-source, are available, but each with critical limitations in term of information management and interoperability. Moreover the huge amount of data generated by genomic files (forecast Exabites in few years) costs a relavant amount of money to public and private repositories (Hospitals, Data Banks, Cloud Services, etc.). The GenCoder is the first tool able to implement the new format developed by the MPEG-G group, aiming to unify all the different formats, and become a standard. The GenCoder will facilitate the sharing of information among the community, and reduce costs to both Research Institutions and Software Houses involved in this market.
Genomic analysis is revolutionizing the future of medicine and human healthcare. Information coded in our DNA can be used to identify predispositions to diseases, prevent pathologies like cystic fibrosis or Type 2 Diabetes, support diagnosis and drive the targeted treatment of lethal diseases such as cancer. The development of the GenCoder will improve the interaction of the many actors in the research field (bioinformatics, chemists, biologists, statistics, physicians) and the exchange of information among them, thus supporting the genomic research. Moreover it will lower the overall costs related, saving space occupied by data and processing energy.
The objective of the SME project is the development of a software suite, the GenCoder, to make accessible to the whole community the MPEG-G standard format, using the most advanced technical features currently available. The product is forecast to be ready in 20 months.
