Future operation of SNPCheck and DMuDB
The Diagnostic Mutation Database (DMuDB) and SNPCheck services were developed and maintained by NGRL Manchester as part of its remit to support diagnostic genetics laboratories in the UK. They were developed with funding from the UK Department of Health. This ended in March 2012, after which we aimed to maintain the services through subscription, and by pursuing grant funding. We have established a strong core of regular users who have subscribed to DMuDB and/or SNPCheck, but we have not achieved a position where these services can be self sustaining. NGRL is now hosted within the Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine, part of the Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, and the Centre is not able to subsidise future provision of these services.
We are looking at options to continue their provision or to allow access to them in alternative ways, e.g. with a reduced level of curation and maintenance. But for now we are planning to start the process of withdrawing the services from the end of February 2014.
I am very keen to receive feedback from users, e.g. about how this might affect services, or how DMuDB and SNPCheck might be developed or adapted to meet developing needs given the current situation. We are also committed to continuing our operation and development of the services for the present. For example we will launch a link to the Alamut gene browser in January to improved access to DMuDB, and we are continuing to add new data to DMuDB and would encourage users to keep on submitting variants.
I would like to thank all of our users, subscribers and supporters and hope that we will be able to continue to support your work in the future. If you have questions or comments please get in touch with any of the NGRL team.
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