Congenica said today it will begin offering an on-premise deployment option for running its Sapientia diagnostic decision support platform, in addition to cloud deployment.
Sapientia is a clinical genomics analysis platform designed to analyze, interpret, and generate clinically actionable reports on patient derived genomic data.
The company cited demand by its customers—which include government institutions, hospitals and private research organizations—for locally-operated platforms. Their reasons ranged from institutional preference to the need to comply with laws governing the management of patient data, Congenica said.
Congenica will offer customers a choice of deployment options, either via cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) or using local infrastructure. That choice, according to the company, will allow for greater flexibility in how organizations control their platform and maintain their software.
Among the first users to opt for on-premises deployment of Sapientia is Congenica’s commercial partner for the China market, Digital China Health Technologies Co. Ltd. (DCH). DCH oversees China’s leading oncology database, with applications that encompass development of cancer treatments, telemedicine, and insurance. DCH completed a Series A financing last year of an undisclosed amount that saw investment from “internationally renowned investment funds,” the company stated in its presentation of annual results for 2018 on March 27, and had a post-investment valuation of HKD3.8 billion ($484 million).
“Negotiations are already underway with major Chinese hospitals that require an on-premise solution and Congenica anticipates the flexible deployment model will help to further differentiate its offering and accelerate commercial progress in the global markets,” Congenica said in a statement.
Successful talks would allow Congenica to deliver on its expectation that the choice of delivery methods for Sapientia will result in additional business for the company.
“We expect to be announcing commercial growth in the near future that is enabled by this engineering achievement,” stated Congenica CEO David Atkins, PhD.
Said Congenica CTO Peter Fox: “We believe this future-proofs Congenica’s platform for the next five to ten years, whilst also further investing in our SaaS cloud deployment.”
To achieve automated application deployment, scaling, and management in an efficient and cost-effective manner, Congenica is using the Kubernetes portable, extensible open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, designed to facilitate both declarative configuration and automation.
“This simpler, faster and scalable deployment, with high resilience and availability, enables more secure and cost-effective software for our customers,” Fox added.
In addition to providing Sapientia, Congenica also provides associated clinical services that are designed to enable clinicians to interrogate the human genome to identify disease-causing variants.
Based in Cambridge, UK, at the Welcome Genome Campus, Congenica provides diagnostic decision support services for the National Health Service (NHS) Genomic Medicine Service, through a multi-year contract with Genomics England whose value has not been disclosed.
“We are excited to hear of this latest development in Congenica’s technology,” aid Augusto Rendon, Director of Bioinformatics of Genomics England. “Congenica have been able to process a huge number of samples for the 100,000 Genomes Project, and routinely process several thousand samples a month for Genomics England.”
