Powering UK Health Discovery
Lifebit turns Complex Genomics Infrastructure into Scalable, Cost-Efficient Discovery
Supporting Genomics England’s research mission across the 100,000 Genomes Project, the National Genomic Research Library, and the Generation Study — without the data ever leaving the perimeter.
Research at population scale, with sovereignty fully intact
The Genomics England Research Environment now supports more than 5,000 accredited researchers across academia, the NHS, and industry — running on a single shared platform that satisfies all five pillars of the UK Statistics Authority Five Safes framework. Time-to-data for an approved project has dropped from months to days. Data has never left the perimeter.
“I am incredibly excited that Lifebit joined us to launch the next phase of our research capabilities.”
Chris Wigley
Former CEO, Genomics England
Challenges
- Strict privacy and governance requirements
- Fragmented data environments
- High cost and risk of transferring datasets
- Limited ability to analyse large distributed cohorts
Outcomes
- 30–90% lower cloud costs through large-scale analysis optimisation
- Improved collaboration
- Faster scientific discovery through faster access to data
- Access to low/no-code user functionality
- Easy to bring own tools and external data
impact
125,500
cancer & rare disease
genomes with full clinical data
50
pentabytes
of data
1200+
users
30–90%
lower
cloud costs
FAQs
A federated Trusted Research Environment, deployed inside the perimeter
Lifebit deployed its federated TRE as the analytics layer of the Genomics England Research Environment. Researchers submit projects, receive vetted access, and analyze data in place — the architecture physically prevents bulk export.
Here’s how the federated TRE supports research at population scale:
Compute moves to the data
Analyses run on infrastructure inside Genomics England’s perimeter. Researchers connect to the platform; the data does not move to them. This is what the UK’s Five Safes calls Safe Settings — enforced architecturally, not procedurally.
Airlock-mediated Safe Outputs
Aggregate statistics, model coefficients, and disclosure-controlled outputs egress through an automated review process. Participant-level records never leave the environment, regardless of researcher accreditation.
Operational governance at NHS scale
Project approvals, researcher accreditation, data-use agreements, and real-time audit logs run on the same control plane — available end-to-end to Genomics England’s governance team without dependency on vendor-supplied reports.
Multi-tool research workflow
Jupyter, RStudio, Nextflow, BOLT-LMM, SAIGE, and Lifebit’s federated AI tooling all run within the environment, giving researchers a familiar toolset on protected data without specialised re-engineering.
Next step