The BioCompute Framework provides an object oriented design from which a BCO that contains details of a pipeline and how it was used can be constructed, digitally signed, and shared.
The BioCompute concept was originally developed to satisfy FDA regulatory research and review needs for evaluation, validation, and verification of genomics data.
However, the Biocompute Framework follows FAIR Data Principles[4] and can be used broadly to provide communication and interoperability between different platforms, industries, scientists and regulators[5] As a standardization for genomic data, BioCompute Objects are mostly useful to three groups of users: 1) academic researchers carrying out new genetic experiments, 2) pharma/biotech companies that wish to submit work to the FDA for regulatory review, and 3) clinical settings (hospitals and labs) that offer genetic tests and personalized medicine.
A Public-Private partnerships was formed between GWU and CBER and has become an easy point of entry for new individuals or institutions into the BCO project to participate in the discussion of best practices for the objects.
The Genomics Compliance Suite is a Shiny app that offers similar features to regular expressions found in all modern text editors.
There are several internally developed open source software packages and web applications that implement the BioCompute specification, three of which have been deployed in a publicly accessible AWS EC2 cloud.