Today, we’re excited to announce a new ISO standard, Requirements for interoperable systems for genomic surveillance. Genomic surveillance combined with rapid realtime data sharing is the most important tool we have for detecting and stopping the spread of infectious diseases, like COVID.

Throughout the COVID pandemic, we had the privilege of working together with our provincial and federal government to implement a solution for tracking and sharing information on variants of concern. It became clear that the centralized model of data sharing is fraught with issues — it makes data linkage difficult and causes significant time delays, misaligned incentives, and data hoarding. Centralization just doesn’t work at national or planet scale.

This document describes design principles and the service and standards requirements to enable an interoperable system for federated genomic surveillance. It represents a vision, shared by our partners, for the future of pandemic prevention.

Download the Requirements for interoperable systems for genomic surveillance document from the ISO website.