HPC is Saving Lives

In healthcare and life sciences, the quest to develop new therapies and push the boundaries of current knowledge increasingly hinges on high performance computing systems. The massive processing power of HPC makes it possible for research teams to use techniques like machine learning and deep learning to extract new insights from massive amounts of data—from the human genome to biomolecules.

Ed Turkel

In this issue of HPC Leading Edge, you will find some great examples of how researchers are capitalizing on HPC systems to take healthcare and life sciences to higher heights, for instance:

• In Australia, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research is using HPC systems to transform how genomic research is performed. The research focuses on understanding how variations in DNA sequences contribute to health and disease. This research creates a foundation for precision medicine that gets the right medicine to the right people at the right time.
• In France, the Gustave Roussy center for cancer research and care is using HPC systems to pioneer the development of new treatments for children with cancer.  As  part  of  the  treatment,  the  center  uses HPC to analyze  the  genomic  alterations  of  tumors  to  better  adjust  relapse  therapies.  
• In the US, researchers at Virginia Tech are tapping into the power of distributed HPC systems to accelerate the analysis of genomes to find mutations that could lead to cancer. In these efforts, researchers move their work seamlessly between a local HPC cluster and the Microsoft cloud.

Ultimately, stories like these are about much more than great things happening in research labs. At their core, they are really about the creative ways that people are using the power of HPC to both save and transform lives.

— Ed Turkel, HPC Strategist, Dell EMC