Firewalls, NHS and other organisations

1
Firewalls, NHS and other organisations access to
NGS resourcesPresent Steve Brewer
(facilitator/scribe), Gagarine (Greg) Yaikhom,
Gareth Smith, David Wallom (towards end to
discuss future work)
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Scenario 1

• Gareth Shared Genomics Project at Manchester
  HPC analysis of large genomic datasets for
  patients. Providing infrastructure for clinicians
  and epidemiologists to do statistical analysis of
  genomic datasets coupled with medical data. (part
  social science/part bio-informatics). Local
  cluster with limited no. of users. (note data
  already anonymised.)
• Wider deployment throughout NHS could benefit a
  NGS job submission stack eg (RMCS). What will be
  required? Each deployment will require a liaison
  person

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Scenario 2

• MCTP Monte Carlo Treatment Planning
• Currently using Condor at Cardiff and accessing
  NGS resources at Oxford.
• First challenge clinicians and (perhaps) medical
  physicists want someone (or something) to sort
  out account registration and configuration. The
  tipping point is the language and new
  technologies (eg SSL)
• Second challenge establishing communication
  between secure networks such as the NHS and NGS.
  Default is firewall due to perceived security
  risk. MofU and/or SLAs needed. Patient data
  cannot leave the NHS firewall. NHS reluctant to
  allow the applications inside

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Approaches

• MCTP anonymise patient data within NHS firewall,
  transfer to NGS, return o/p to NHS
• Drawback no standard anonymisation tool for
  radiotherapy establishing connection difficult
  due to use of non-standard ports conflict of
  different policy (NHS uses Caldicott
  rules/guidelines NHSs interpretation of data
  protection law)
• Difficult to make progress untill both parties
  have policy agreements (MoU, SLA etc.)
• NHS physicians currently using NGS system to run
  experiments. Other institutions are acquiring
  certificates and time different process could
  be streamlined

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Future work

• NGS is the glue that bridges between
  institutions. Shiboleth coming. How many NHS
  institutions are part of the UK Access management
  Federation.
• See SARoNGS (Shibboleth Access to Resources on
  the National Grid Service )project.
• David Wallom to help take forward both scenarios
  through NGS solutions proposed
• Precedent for MCTP in Genius project at UCL which
  runs real-time calculations of brain scans for
  surgeons during procedures. Data is transferred
  from NGS scanners to NGS and US TeraGrid.