Matchmaker Exchange Helps Rare Disease Community Find Me a Find

As databases containing the genetic information of individuals proliferate, an opportunity for physicians, researchers, and individual to find people with specific rare mutations exists. Matchmaker Exchange represents an effort to tie together a variety of databases and make them accessible through a single portal. We spoke to Anthony Philippakis, cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a data scientist at the Broad Institute’s Program for Medical and Population Genetics, about the Matchmaker Exchange, which he helped create. Philippakis discussed how the exchange works, the benefits he hopes it will provide, and the technical and other challenges it faces.