Federated Trusted Research Environment (TRE)
Analysis travels to the data
Turn your data into insights without compromising security and privacy with Lifebit, the pioneer of the federated Trusted Research Environment (TRE).
Trusted by the world's biomedical leaders
What is cross-border genomic research?
Trusted Research Environments (TREs) are secure, controlled digital environments that provide researchers with safe, remote access to sensitive health data. Also known as “Data Safe Havens,” and “Secure Data Environments”, TREs allow approved users to access, analyze, and store data within a single secure location, ensuring patient privacy through strict access controls and pseudonymization.
Following the Five Safes Framework, TREs support collaborative research by facilitating access without compromising data security.
Fast, specialized data harmonization & product creation
Lifebit is trusted by top pharma and data providers for creating data products at scale.
Most secure TRE, by federated design
From the pioneers of federation, Lifebit’s TRE uniquely brings analysis and computation to where biomedical data resides.
Only TRE to guarantee results
The only solution for fast, accurate results through a TRE that is proven to handle datasets from over 250M+ patients.
Why Lifebit?
The most widely adopted TRE on the market
Unmatched Usability and Security
in One Platform
Achieving both security and usability for biomedical data is crucial to accelerate research and drive meaningful innovation.
Security & Control: Sensitive biomedical data must be stored securely with strictly controlled access to prevent data & privacy breaches. The traditional approach of anonymizing and transferring patient data to a central computing location leads to loss of data control and introduces re-identification risk. The only way to fully secure patient data is to keep data and computation in the organization’s jurisdiction and environment where it can be monitored, ensuring full compliance with data residency and privacy regulations.
Usability & Data interoperability: Biomedical data is often fragmented, unstructured, and challenging to use. Researchers need data products that are fit-for-purpose and ready for analysis, along with a platform that enables joint queries across distributed databases, supporting collaborative research without unnecessary barriers.
Lifebit’s Trusted Research Environment (TRE) stands alone as the only federated data platform purpose-built for life sciences and biomedical data, combining complete usability and data integration with uncompromising security and control.
Impact
Safeguard your sensitive biomedical data with Lifebit’s Trusted Research Environment
MOVE FASTER
5x
Faster than other solutions to identify data, create cohorts, deploy pipelines and AI models & perform analyses.
GET GUARANTEED RESULTS
100%
of our clients get results. Lifebit’s Platform is the only TRE to contractually guarantee results.
OVERCOME COMPLIANCE OBSTACLES
100%
Data stays in your environment, ensuring data security compliance and reducing risk.
Frequently asked questions
Is cross-border genomic research legal under GDPR?
Yes, under specific safeguards. GDPR Article 46 permits international data transfers where Standard Contractual Clauses, Binding Corporate Rules, or adequacy decisions are in place. Federated research architectures — where individual-level data never crosses a border — eliminate the transfer question entirely by keeping patient records in the source jurisdiction.
Can Genomics England data be used in a cross-border study?
What is the difference between cross-border research and data sharing?
What is the Five Safes framework?
Which platforms support cross-border genomic research?
How long does it take to onboard a new cross-border data partner?
About cross-border genomic research
Segment solutions
Lifebit’s Trusted Research Environment offers a broad range of use cases across segments
Public Sector Initiatives
TRE enabling controlled access to biomedical data
Controlled data access & sharing
Population genomics research
Cohort building & analysis
Data commercialization
Federal Health
TRE for sensitive data analysis
Controlled data access & sharing
Internal R&D
Cohort building & analysis
Data Providers
TRE for secure and controlled clinico-genomic and real world data
Controlled data access & sharing
Data commercialization
Health Nonprofit
TRE for storage, computing and multi-omics data analysis
Multi-omics data analysis
Population genomics research
Controlled data access & sharing
Data commercialization
Pharma & Biotech
TRE for multi-modal data analysis
Multi-omics data analysis
NGS data processing
Target identification & discovery
Patient subtyping stratification
Controlled data access & sharing
Securely protecting your sensitive biomedical data.
End-to-End Data Governance and Security by Design
based on the most advanced federated architecture in the industry
Ready to collaborate on distributed data?
Contact Lifebit today and discover how our federated data solutions can accelerate your research.
We’ll respond as soon as possible.
FAQs
Data federation is a software process that enables numerous databases to work together as one. Using this technology is important for accessing sensitive biomedical health data, as the data remains within appropriate jurisdictional boundaries, while metadata (information about the data) is centralised and searchable.
Data federation is an alternative to a model in which data is moved or duplicated then centrally housed – when data is moved it becomes vulnerable to interception and movement of large datasets is often very costly for researchers. Instead, approved users may access the data via linking technologies such as Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs.
A Federation Platform-as-a-Service (FedPaaS) is a secure, cloud-based service model that enables organizations to access and analyze data directly in their own cloud environment—without moving or duplicating the data. Unlike traditional bioinformatics platforms that require data to be transferred to the provider’s cloud account, Lifebit’s FedPaaS keeps data and computation within the organization’s own infrastructure.
This model allows organizations to:
Maintain Full Control: Data stays in your organization’s cloud account, giving you full ownership and control without data exposure to shared environments.
Ensure Data Residency Compliance: Data remains within your jurisdiction and infrastructure, which is essential for compliance with data residency and privacy regulations.
Optimize Cloud Costs: Since data remains in your cloud account, you avoid the added costs and markups of external cloud storage and compute fees, and you leverage your own provider discounts.
Avoid Costly Data Transfers: If your relationship with the FedPaaS provider changes, there are no egress fees or data migrations needed—your data always remains in your environment.
With Lifebit’s platform patient level data never moves thanks to its enterprise-grade federated architecture that keeps data in-place, and that adheres to the highest global security standards, including FedRamp, GDPR, HIPAA, ISO, and SOC II. We also implement the 5 Safes Framework to ensure strict data residency and secure access, making us the trusted choice for government and regulated industries.