Why Optus is invested in helping find a cure for childhood cancer

By Theresa Eyssens

Each year over 1,000 children in Australia are diagnosed with cancer and, sadly, nearly three die of it every week. And while survival rates have improved dramatically in the last 50 years – today 8 out of 10 children do survive – the race is on to find a cure.

I personally understand the impact that these kinds of illnesses have, both on children and the pain that they suffer, but also on their families and friends. In 2007, my much loved nephew died after a five year battle with childhood cancer.

So, when the Children’s Cancer Institute partnered with Optus Enterprise and Equinix looking for a way to create a faster, more cost-effective and secure means of integrating and sharing research data with their various collaborators around the world, the Optus team were all in and fully invested in doing whatever they could do to help the Institute with their vital research.

Why sharing results has never been more important

Children have different types of cancers to adults so, in many cases, a different approach to treatment is needed. And the more information researchers have access to, the better.

By sharing results from clinical trials with peers around the world, researchers aim to be able to both speed time to diagnosis and customise cures for children.

It means a lot to be able to do things for organisations like the Institute and to be personally involved in an initiative that's so incredibly powerful.

Optus’ role, working with the Institute, was to help them transform what was an in-house high computing environment that simply wasn’t capable of scaling to handle the huge amounts of data they generate, store and analyse.

To achieve this, we partnered with Equinix to devise a new secure data platform that would meet the institute’s needs – both today and into the future.

Essential elements of the platform include data centre hosting (secure cage) with Optus and Equinix Cloud Exchange for public cloud connectivity – critical for swift and seamless access to data via AWS and Azure for all the research institutes working together.

The Institute can now take the data they generate in-house and analyse it – together with results coming out of other institutes around the world, whether in Heidelberg, Memphis or wherever – to better identify trends and patient outcomes.

By bringing data from disparate locations into the same cloud environment, researchers can start to find the critical signals amongst the noise.

Now with the right tools and platforms at their disposal, researchers at the Institute can now easily share the incredible amount of data-rich research that will play such an important part in ending childhood cancer for once and for all. .

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Find out more

To discuss how Optus can help you innovate with Data Centre solutions, contact your Optus Account Manager or call the Optus Enterprise hotline on 1800 555 937.