New publication: Solu: a cloud platform for real-time genomic pathogen surveillance

Our new study validating the Solu platform for fast, user-friendly, and privacy-focused outbreak response has been published in BMC Bioinformatics!

Read the abstract below, or check out the full-text article on the BMC Bioinformatics webpage or on PubMed.

Background

Genomic surveillance is extensively used for tracking public health outbreaks and healthcare-associated pathogens. Despite advancements in bioinformatics pipelines, there are still significant challenges in terms of infrastructure, expertise, and security when it comes to continuous surveillance. The existing pipelines often require the user to set up and manage their own infrastructure and are not designed for continuous surveillance that demands integration of new and regularly generated sequencing data with previous analyses. Additionally, academic projects often do not meet the privacy requirements of healthcare providers.

Results

We present Solu, a cloud-based platform that integrates genomic data into a real-time, privacy-focused surveillance system.

Evaluation

Solu’s accuracy for taxonomy assignment, antimicrobial resistance genes, and phylogenetics was comparable to established pathogen surveillance pipelines. In some cases, Solu identified antimicrobial resistance genes that were previously undetected. Together, these findings demonstrate the efficacy of our platform.

Conclusions

By enabling reliable, user-friendly, and privacy-focused genomic surveillance, Solu has the potential to bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and practical, widespread application in healthcare settings. The platform is available for free academic use at https://platform.solugenomics.com.

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