Qiagen enhances bioinformatics workflows with new secondary analysis solution for oncology

Germany-headquartered company Qiagen has announced the availability of QCI Secondary Analysis, a cloud-based software-as-a-services (SaaS) solution enabling high-throughput secondary analysis for use with any clinical next-generation sequencing (NGS) data.

This turnkey service supports all Qiagen QIAseq panels and seamlessly integrates with QCI Interpret, Qiagen’s clinical variant interpretation and reporting software, to deliver highly scalable and customisable Sample to Insight workflows for oncology and inherited disease applications.

Typically, sequencing data is processed in three phases: After the signals registered by the NGS device have initially been translated into digital information (primary analysis), the DNA fragments encoded must be merged into a connected sequence and analysed for variants in relation to a human reference genome (secondary analysis). In the third and final step (tertiary analysis), the identified variants are interpreted in the context of a specific clinical picture.

Expanding on the Qiagen Clinical Insights (QCI) portfolio, QCI Secondary Analysis is designed to streamline analysis from a range of assay types, enabling labs to process more sequencing data without extensive time and resource investment.

The turnkey solution is deployed on the Qiagen Clinical Cloud, a secure cloud environment ensuring the highest degree of isolation and data protection, including compliance with ISO 27001, General Data Protect Regulation (GDPR), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) requirements.