The platform's creation, says Anthony Philippakis, chief data officer at the Broad Institute, was driven by two trends within the wider biomedical space: an explosion in the volume and types of data available – from genomics data to medical imaging and electronic health records – alongside a greater need for data sharing within biomedical science. SEE: (TechRepublic) "No one organisation, whether it be a medical centre, or a university, or a company, has enough data in order to go after profound questions like the genetic basis of the disease," he says. "For a long time, although we've embraced the idea of data sharing, especially in genomics, and in many other fields, the way we've operationalized, it is a bit silly – which is to say that, in order to share data, we have to copy it: we put copies on servers and tell researchers to download it to their local environment," he explains.