CSIRO and GSI Lab, one of Indonesia’s leading genomics testing facilities, expanded a relationship-building grant from Australia’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) into an opportunity with Indonesia’s Ministry of Health.

CSIRO was the winner of an international tender, administered by the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) with their CSIRO developed technology that GSI Lab helped adapt to the Indonesian context.

CSIRO's technology was identified to provide the bioinformatics and data exchange capability for the Ministry of Health Republic of Indonesia’s Biomedical and Genomic Science Initiative (BGSi), which is set to revolutionise Indonesia's health system by leveraging biomedical and genomic science to enhance disease surveillance, identification, and precision medicine tailored to individual patients.

Ensuring transparency and compatibility with the other large-scale international biobanking initiatives such as England's UK Biobank, US’ All of Us and Singapore’s PRECISE, BGSi opted to build on open standards rather than proprietary commercial products.

CSIRO's sBeacon technology was a natural fit as the first production-ready implementation [1] of the Global Alliance for Genomics in Health (GA4GH) standards.

Similarly, CSIRO's cloud-native approach for massively-parallel genome annotation (sVEP), is future-proofing BGSI's plans to scale to potentially 10 million samples (10x of what other international initiatives have on their roadmap).

BGSi's vision sees genomics being used to inform precision health through accurate genetic diagnosis, genetic risk assessment as well as pharmacogenomics profiles, both of which being generated on genomics samples through routine clinical care within BGSi’s Hubs.

Furthermore, once the genomic data has delivered clinical insights for the patient, it will be added to the growing Indonesian Biobank. This resource is poised to become one of the largest genomic biobanks in the world, covering one of the largest and most diverse population group. As such, it will hold potential for a deep-dive into human genetic diversity with flow-on effects on trial design and drug development.

Delivering this capability, BGSI partners with the Indonesian consortium GXC, comprised of GSI (Genomik Solidaritas Indonesia) and the end-to-end ICT solutions company Xapiens Teknologi Indonesia, creating further innovation opportunities within Indonesia. The consortium is advised by CSIRO, which builds closer partnerships with Australia and facilitates knowledge exchange in the emerging area of precision medicine.