Category Archives: Big picture

NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part V

         September 20, 2016
Quality Managment

Any validated bioinformatics pipeline must be continuously monitored. Quality management in clinical testing labs ensures that any divergence from predefined quality metrics during the analysis of clinical samples is investigated. For example: There is an insufficient number of sequence reads that passed the predefined base quality score threshold The number of variants identified in a data set may deviate substantially… Read more »

Webcast on Big Data in Genomics

         September 8, 2016

Wednesday, September 21st @ 12:00 pm EDT Every day, the trove of genomic data is growing. Clinics are sequencing targeted genes at high read depths to report out genetic tests. Research groups are adding new exomes and genomes to their disease-specific cohorts. Agricultural breeders are genotyping their herds and flocks by the thousands of thousands. The conventional attitude to big… Read more »

NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part IV

         September 6, 2016
clinical testing

After the Wet Lab process has been completed, the bioinformatics analysis of the sequencing data work begins. The next three blogs will focus on three aspects of this process. The building blocks of a bioinformatics pipeline, documentation and validation (today’s topic) Quality Management Clinical Reporting The Building Blocks of an NGS PipelineThe bioinformatics process to analyze NGS data occurs in three… Read more »

NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part II

         August 25, 2016
ngs-based clinical testing

We have come a long way since Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) evolved as a set of technologies in the 1970s. The higher throughput and rapid reduction of costs associated with NGS have lead to the accelerated adoption of clinical testing that we are experiencing today. Currently, it is applied to analyze inherited diseases, tumors, hematologic malignancies and infectious diseases. It is… Read more »

NGS-Based Clinical Testing: Part I

         August 16, 2016
NGS Testing

The adoption of genetic services is key to our ability to provide personalized medicine in the future. The goal is to better diagnose diseases, predict their outcome, and choose the best possible care option for a patient. We still have a long way to go to achieve this goal. While there is agreement about the ultimate goal, there is still… Read more »

Our 5 Most Watched Webcasts

         July 21, 2016
5 Most Watched Webcasts

Every month hundreds of clinicians and researchers access the variety of free resources on the Golden Helix website. Our resource library hosts eBooks, webcasts and tutorials to keep the community apprised of new methods, informed on best practices and to help our customers get the most out of their software purchase. Here is a list of the 5 most watched webcasts… Read more »

Teaching Bioinformatics Concepts & Practical Skills

         April 19, 2016
Teaching Bioinformatics

New breakthroughs are being made every day in genomics. It’s a dynamic and fascinating industry, and with exceptional growth forecasted in the DNA sequencing market, a new generation of people are entering the field: future researchers, clinicians, counselors and doctors. This new generation will need to learn not only the science, but also understand how to process the massive amounts… Read more »

Concepts and Relevance of GWAS

         March 17, 2016
Genome-Wide Association Studies

Concepts and Relevance of Genome-Wide Association Studies Genome-Wide Association Studies continue to be a very effective method for determining the underlying cause of disease, Golden Helix is happy to share our long-standing knowledge with the community. We are very happy to announce that “Concepts and Relevance of Genome-Wide Association Studies”, a paper surrounding GWAS was recently published in Science Progress… Read more »

Scaling is in our DNA: Making Genomics Accessible

         February 11, 2016
Scalable Data

Scaling is in our DNA: Making Genomics Accessible One of the things I absolutely love about the work we do at Golden Helix is keeping up with the changes in data analysis driven by the iterative and generational leaps in technology. But one thing has always been a constant since day one: we break preconceived notions of what scale of… Read more »

Genetic Data Warehousing e-Book

         February 10, 2016
Genetic Data Warehouse

Genetic Data Warehousing e-Book In our webcast last week, we announced the upcoming release of VSWarehouse, a scalable genetic data warehouse for VarSeq. Genetic data warehousing becomes more important as Next-Generation Sequencing is taking off in the clinic, creating significant data management issues for clinicians, scientists and IT professionals alike. How can we retain the massive amounts of data coming out… Read more »

Announcing VSWarehouse – Golden Helix’s Data Warehouse Solution for genomic data

         January 21, 2016
VSWarehouse Updates

So, why are we launching a new data warehouse product? Why did we build VSWarehouse? According to Grand View Market Research, the next generation sequencing (NGS) market size was $2.0 billion (USD) globally in 2014. This number is expected to grow from 2015 to 2022 at an annual rate of about 40%. What drives this phenomenon is the increasing number… Read more »

What to expect from Golden Helix in 2016

         December 31, 2015
VSWarehouse

Golden Helix in 2016 We had a terrific year 2015. It was the year in which we got serious about the clinical testing market. We successfully continued on the path of attracting more referenceable clients such as University of Iowa, Baby Genes, Prevention Genetics and many more. We rounded out our VarSeq suite by adding more clinically relevant features and… Read more »

Happy Holidays!

         December 24, 2015
Happy Holidays

Like most, we at Golden Helix love this time of year! It is a time to spend with family and friends, creating memories and reflecting on the past year. From all of us here, to you and yours, we wish you a very happy holiday and a prosperous 2016!  

Announcing the 3rd Annual Abstract Challenge!

         December 21, 2015
Recent Customer Publications

As part of our ongoing commitment to empower genetic research, it is time to announce our third annual abstract challenge. Here at Golden Helix, we are dedicated to creating powerful software that enables researchers to complete complex analysis. This competition allows us to enable discovery by awarding software to those making an impact in the field. The competition has been very… Read more »

They’ve isolated the funding gene!

         November 3, 2015

Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 Passed! We at Golden Helix, and I are certain that many in our community, are more than pleased to hear that President Obama has signed the “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015“. Most importantly, the budget agreement raises discretionary spending by $80 billion in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 which should create room for increased spending… Read more »

What to know about VSReports

         October 27, 2015

What you need to know At the beginning of October, VSReports came to VarSeq. Since then, we have been getting rave reviews from our customers. As Dr. Andreas Scherer mentioned earlier this month, VSReports takes the output of your tertiary variant analysis and converts it into a fully customized and actionable clinical grade report in just one click. Additionally, VSReports ships with… Read more »

Reflection on ASHG 2015

         October 14, 2015

ASHG 2015 in Baltimore was a very good conference for us at Golden Helix. It was a delight to connect with existing clients as well as interested members of our community. The conference is a premium networking opportunity for professionals in our field, with an ever increasing number of talks, demos and a constantly expanding vendor exhibition area.    … Read more »

Top Five Add-On Scripts for SVS

         October 6, 2015

While stand-alone SVS is an amazing statistical software package for genomics analysis, adding additional Python scripts to the program can expand SVS’s genomic analysis capabilities. In this post, I’ll take you through the most frequently downloaded Add-On Scripts for SVS and the top five were not what I expected! Coming in at Number Five is the script Convert Dosages to… Read more »