Genomics, Populations, and Society - 18 - Global genome databases for personalized healthcare and socioeconomic gains

The mammoth Human Genome Project led to technological advances necessary for the human genome sequencing. This has facilitated the development of several genome databases for research, healthcare, and a range of other applications. However, the majority of the current genome databases are hosted by several commercial and private institutions with restricted access for public usage. Only a handful of genome databases belong to individual countries or international organizations. There is thus a greater divide for the genome data made accessible for medical and healthcare contributing to the unacceptable inequity and unethical gap between the rich and poor nations. This challenge and gap is rapidly widening not only between developed high-income and low-middle-income countries. Even worse, there are divisions within the rich nations, where sections of the society are deprived of genome-based diagnosis, and treatment and prevention of common and rare inherited-genetic diseases. The recent move toward creating the indigenous population-specific genome databases (pangenomics) is encouraging but a lot more needs to be done and achieved for ethical, effective, and equitable genomic healthcare.