Modernizing genetic diagnostics and safeguarding sensitive patient data with MHH and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
Hannover Medical School (MHH) uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to massively accelerate whole-genome sequencing analysis, cutting processing times from several hours to 1 hour while keeping highly sensitive genetic data within Germany.
Overview
The Department of Human Genetics at MHH processes thousands of patient samples up to 8 times faster powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Using the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, the team keeps genetic data within Germany, supporting digital sovereignty and meeting the country’s strict medical data residency requirements. Benedikt Schur, who leads bioinformatics and information technology at MHH, says the combination of speed, scale, and complaint cloud infrastructure is helping deliver faster diagnostic insight for patients.
About Hannover Medical School (MHH)
Hannover Medical School (MHH), founded in 1965, is Germany’s only independent, free-standing medical university. Operating on a centralized campus in Hanover, Lower Saxony, it integrates a maximum-care tertiary hospital, elite biomedical research units, and academic teaching under a single umbrella.
Scaling cost-effectively with AWS to speed sample processing
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. Schur’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 Schur. “Parallel processing gives us the power we need to give the patient patients the answers as fast as possible.”
Strengthening sovereignty while preparing for AI-driven care
For MHH, digital sovereignty is non-negotiable. “Genetic data is the blueprint for your whole body. So it’s really sensitive data,” says Schur. “Taking care of that data is not only important for us, but also for our patients.” German law requires genetic data to be stored and processed entirely within the country, and as Schur says, “The AWS European Sovereign Cloud helps us keep data safe and close to our patients in Germany.”
Schur sees sovereign cloud infrastructure as the foundation MHH needs to expand advanced genomics and AI. “We’re very excited to see AWS investing in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud as data residency is really important in our sector. That can make a huge difference to the stuff we’re able to realize in the cloud.” Looking ahead, MHH plans 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.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud helps us keep data safe and close to our patients in Germany.
Benedikt Schur
Bioinformatics and Information Technology Lead, Department of Human Genetics, Hannover Medical School (MHH)More customer stories
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