Biology must develop its own big-data systems

摘要

The last week of April was designated Big Data Week. But in modern biology, every week is big-data week: life-sciences research now routinely churns out more information than scientists can analyse without help. That help increasingly comes in the form of expensive data-management systems, but these are hard to design and most are even harder to use. As a result, a long line of data-management projects in the life sciences - many of which I have been involved with - have failed. The size, complexity and heterogeneity of the data generated in labs across the world can only increase, and the introduction of cloud computing will encourage the same mistakes. Just a stones throw from where I work, at least three computer companies are already touting cloud-based data-management systems for the life sciences. We need to find ways to manage and integrate data to make discoveries in fields such as genomics, and we need to do this quickly.