GA4GH and INMEGEN agree to a Strategic Partnership to expand the use of genomic data standards in Latin America

21 May 2026

The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica (INMEGEN) have agreed to a Strategic Partnership to facilitate genomic data sharing and advance precision medicine and population health in Latin America.

Adapted from a press release published by Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica on 19 April 2026.

Peter Goodhand, CEO of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), and Jorge Meléndez Zajgla, Director General of Mexico’s National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to announce a Strategic Partnership between the two organisations. This Strategic Partnership marks GA4GH’s first in Latin America and outlines a shared vision for advancing genomic and clinical data sharing both within Mexico and across Latin America.

GA4GH is a global standards development organisation, with an aim to accelerate progress in human health by establishing a shared global approach to responsible, broad, and democratised use of genomic and related health data. GA4GH is continually working to expand its global outreach and engagement efforts to ensure that the standards it develops are relevant across a wide range of contexts.

INMEGEN is one of Mexico’s National Institutes of Health dedicated to promoting genomic medicine and building a bridge between research innovation and clinical care.

The Strategic Partnership between GA4GH and INMEGEN addresses a global problem: currently, genomic data is fragmented and stored in incompatible systems, hindering access to the knowledge needed to transform healthcare. To overcome this challenge, GA4GH is developing standards that enable authorised specialists to access global genomic data through a rigorous framework, grounded on a strong foundation of human rights.

The MoU establishes that INMEGEN will contribute its extensive experience in the genomics of indigenous and Latin American populations, ensuring that GA4GH’s standards are appropriate for the collection, curation, and processing of genomic databases in the region. GA4GH will provide the technical and regulatory framework to support INMEGEN’s objective of consolidating a federated and reliable data ecosystem.

Currently, INMEGEN is leading the development of a Latin American genomic database focused on variants linked to ancestry markers, in addition to safeguarding the most important collection of indigenous population genomes in Mexico. However, leveraging the potential of these assets presents technical and administrative challenges that exceed the capabilities of any single organisation, making this Strategic Partnership essential.

Therefore, this Strategic Partnership will also provide:

• a flexible framework that allows for the alignment of collective efforts, while strictly respecting the administrative and regulatory requirements of Mexican institutions;
• the exchange of knowledge between regional leaders and their international counterparts to share best practices in data and infrastructure management;
• leveraging the global ecosystem to improve the classification of variants of uncertain significance (VUS), comparing regional findings with a broader international context;
• the implementation of cloud standards, enabling researchers to analyse sensitive data in secure virtual environments when they cannot be moved outside national jurisdictions.

Through this formalised collaboration, GA4GH and INMEGEN will coordinate efforts to facilitate responsible genomic and health data sharing across Latin America. This holds the potential to unlock faster disease diagnosis, advance genomic medicine, and foster personalised healthcare to improve population health.

Read more about the objectives of the Strategic Partnership in the Memorandum of Understanding.