Key Takeaways:

  • AWS HealthOmics, a HIPAA-eligible and ISMAP-compliant service that accelerates clinical diagnostic testing and drug discovery through fully managed bioinformatics workflows, is now generally available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region
  • Customers can run scalable genomic analysis pipelines in Japan while leveraging AWS AI services for data interpretation and drug discovery
  • Eisai has begun validating AWS HealthOmics, with expectations for faster genomic analysis and more efficient management of complex workflows

Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, today announced the general availability of AWS HealthOmics in the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region. AWS HealthOmics is a HIPAA-eligible and Japan's Information System Security Management and Assessment Program (ISMAP)-compliant service that helps accelerate clinical diagnostic testing and drug discovery through fully managed bioinformatics workflows. With availability in Tokyo Region, researchers and healthcare organizations can now execute scalable bioinformatics pipeline with built-in security and compliance —without provisioning or managing underlying infrastructure.

Each year, approximately 1 million people in Japan are newly diagnosed with cancer—the country's leading cause of death since 1981. Another 1 million patients live with 348 government-designated intractable diseases, many lacking effective treatments. Genomic medicine—analyzing a patient's complete genetic information to identify disease-causing variants—offers a path toward overcoming these challenges. The Japanese government enacted the Genomic Medicine Promotion Act in 2023, is advancing utilization of 600,000 samples held by Biobank Network Japan, and in March 2026 established the Japan Genomic Medicine Promotion Organization to collect and analyze whole genome data from 7,000 patients annually, scaling to more than 100,000.

While conventional gene panel testing covers approximately 1.5% of the genome in Japan, whole genome sequencing analyzes the remaining regions—generating exponentially larger datasets. Organizations urgently need infrastructure that combines secure workflow execution with high-speed analysis, freeing researchers to focus on science rather than infrastructure management.

Accelerating Genomic Research with AWS AI Services
AWS HealthOmics lets researchers focus on discovery instead of managing infrastructure. The service provides fully managed bioinformatics workflow execution that scales elastically, and integrates with AWS AI services including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock to enable AI-powered genomic data interpretation and agentic AI-driven workflow automation—accelerating drug discovery and precision medicine.

Key capabilities:

  • Fully managed Private Workflows: Supports industry-standard bioinformatics workflow languages (WDL, Nextflow, CWL) with no infrastructure provisioning or management required. Researchers can execute complex genomic analysis pipelines immediately.
  • AI integration: Invoke Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock APIs from within workflows for AI-powered interpretation, variant analysis, and agentic AI process automation.
  • Elastic scalability: Process thousands of samples and tens of thousands of tests per day, scaling seamlessly from R&D to production.
  • Built-in security and compliance: HIPAA eligible and compliant with Japan's ISMAP, a government program for assessing the security of public cloud services.

Globally, organizations such as Roche, Natera, and Genomics England use AWS HealthOmics to advance genomic research.

AWS Commitment to Healthcare and Life Sciences in Japan
AWS has provided secure cloud infrastructure to healthcare and life sciences for more than a decade. In Japan, AWS announced its Journey for 2030: Connecting Data, Creating Value vision in October 2025 to help healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, research institutions, and government agencies connect data across organizational boundaries for better patient outcomes. AWS in Japan publishes usage references aligned with Japan's Three-Ministry and Two-Guideline framework, provides GxP compliance technical papers, and offers HealthData x Agent AI tools at no cost. AWS has committed 2.26 trillion yen (US$14.96 billion) in Japan cloud infrastructure investment from 2024 through 2027, in addition to 1.51 trillion yen invested through 2022.

Kentaro Takahashi, Executive Director of Human Biology Data Ecosystem, Integrated Data Science, Human Biology Creation Hub at Eisai Co., Ltd., a leading Japanese pharmaceutical company driving drug discovery data platforms —said, "In drug discovery research, integrated analysis combining genomic data and other omics-related biological information is essential for identifying drug targets. The linkage between genomics-informed precision medicine and drug discovery is also becoming increasingly important. In 2023, Eisai validated AWS HealthOmics and confirmed the effectiveness of integrating omic analysis with AWS services for drug discovery research. We are pleased that with the launch of AWS HealthOmics in the Tokyo Region, we can accelerate drug discovery innovation using a global-standard genomic analysis service while meeting domestic data residency requirements."

Rajiv Chopra, vice president of AWS Healthcare AI and Life Sciences, said: "Technology is transforming genomic medicine in Japan. With AWS HealthOmics now available in Tokyo Region, Japanese healthcare and life sciences organizations can run large-scale bioinformatics workloads—from clinical diagnostics to drug discovery to population genomics—with the elastic compute they need, the security they require, and the data residency their regulators expect. AWS will continue to work closely with customers and partners in Japan's healthcare and life sciences sector, contributing to the future of healthcare in Japan through technology and innovation."

AWS HealthOmics is available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region. Learn more at https://aws.amazon.com/healthomics/.

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