Federated Learning and Genomic Data Sovereignty
In 2026, the greatest challenge to NGS informatics is not compute power, but Data Privacy. With the tightening of global regulations (like the updated GDPR-Bio and new "Sovereign Genomics" laws in Asia), data cannot easily move across borders.
Federated Learning Models: Informatics companies like DNAnexus and Velsera have deployed federated architectures where the model travels to the data, rather than the data being uploaded to a central cloud. This allows researchers in Germany to train an oncology AI on datasets located in Japan without the raw sequences ever leaving their respective countries.
Blockchain-Backed Audit Trails: To comply with 2026 "Chain of Custody" requirements, informatics platforms now use immutable ledgers to track who accessed which genomic fragment, ensuring that patient consent—especially for rare disease research—is strictly honored and auditable by regulators in real-time.