The Department of Human Genetics at MHH speeds genetic diagnostics while maintaining digital sovereignty using AWS

MHH is one of Germany’s largest hospitals, and its Human Genetics Department alone processed more than 10,000 patient samples in 2025. With the cost of genetic analysis dropping a thousand-fold over the last 15 years, demand has surged and efficiency has become essential. Schnur’s team relies on AWS Batch, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)—including specialized Illumina Dynamic Read Analysis for GENomics (DRAGEN) instances—to handle high-volume sequencing workloads with the speed and consistency essential for modern diagnostics.

Using AWS, the department has the compute capacity required for rapid, large-batch sequencing. “The scalability of AWS is a huge advantage for us. We typically generate batches of samples that need to be processed as fast as possible, and AWS gives us scale and flexibility. By utilizing AWS, we cut down on our processing time by 4 to 8 times,” says Schnur. “Parallel processing gives us the power we need to give the patients the answers as fast as possible.”

The Department of Human Genetics at MHH is looking to apply AI across the entire patient journey, giving physicians a unified, AI-supported view of patient information and ultimately enabling faster, more precise decisions at every stage of care. For Schnur, the opportunities span advanced genomics and AI, where access to patient data is essential to unlocking new possibilities. “Genetic data is the blueprint for your whole body,” he says. “Taking care of that data is not only important for us, but also for our patients.”

As the Department of Human Genetics at MHH expands its genomics and AI work, AWS provides the secure cloud environment needed to handle this sensitive information, with the organization planning to migrate to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in the future. “We’re very excited to see AWS investing in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud as data residency is really important in our sector,” says Schnur. “That can make a huge difference to the stuff we’re able to realize in the cloud.”