National Project of Bio Big Data in Korea has selected US-based Illumina technology for the second pilot project in their effort to work towards establishing a national digital library on health and genome data by 2028.

The multi-ministerial project is overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Science and ICT, and Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

The second pilot will continue to use the NovaSeq™ 6000, Illumina's high-throughput DNA sequencing instrument and DRAGEN™ Bio-IT Platform analysis tool.

After setting the stage in the first pilot project, establishing a database of 10,000 genomes, the consortium comprising Macrogen, Theragen, DNA Link and Lab Genomics was again selected after a competitive evaluation process that highlighted the overall superiority of Illumina's next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms.

The second pilot project will analyze the genetic makeup of 12,500 donated DNA samples from Korean patients living with a rare disease.

Over the next year, the resulting data will be used by the Illumina-backed consortium to prepare for the main project in analyzing and comparing the genes of 1 million Koreans to advance the country's medical technology and improve future public health.