Despite being a well-established research method, the use of NGS and bioinformatics for routine analysis in a public health setting remains a challenge. The NGS and bioinformatics platform was recently set up at the Belgian Institute of Public Health with the aim of utilizing NGS and bioinformatics for the diagnosis, surveillance, control and characterization of potentially harmful organisms; and to promote public health genomics by the effective integration of NGS and bioinformatics into clinical use and public health policy.The platform develops solutions and provides data acquisition and analysis tools to complement the WIV-ISP laboratories services; and to integrate the knowledge of genomics into public health policy. The platform has built up the capacity to both generate and analyze NGS data through an in-house Miseq and advanced bioinformatics pipelines and databases. These services are developed under a strict quality system and offered as a high-quality service platform with the aim of being adapted for routine analysis for both surveillance and emergency cases. Expertise is present in regulation and quality control by active contribution to (inter)national workgroups for the development of guidelines and criteria for NGS. Novel solutions are actively being researched and developed with the aim of supporting a proactive public health policy. Lastly, interaction with other high-throughput technologies such as mass spectrometry, are actively being investigated.
