Building Federated Research Platforms for the Future of Science and Healthcare
- Radoslaw Gasiorek
- Jun 5
- 2 min read
By Montrose Software Team | AI & Data Infrastructure
In the age of big data, scientific collaboration no longer ends at the lab door - it spans continents, disciplines, and institutions. At Montrose Software, we’ve engineered a federated, secure, and scalable data platform that’s redefining how global researchers store, share, and explore multimodal datasets.
From managing terabytes of high-resolution medical recordings to enabling real-time collaboration across nearly 1,000 academic and healthcare institutions, our work empowers discovery at scale—securely, ethically, and efficiently.
A Global Library for Research That Never Sleeps
Academic and healthcare researchers are generating vast and diverse datasets: patient interviews, brain imaging videos, clinical metadata, behavioral studies, and analysis scripts. But without unified systems, these datasets become digital silos - disconnected, underutilized, and hard to govern.
We partnered with a major U.S. research institution to solve this challenge head-on. The result? A federated research platform built for high-throughput, fine-grained access to over 250 TB of data- streamed, searchable, and secure by design.
Designed for Discovery, Built for Scale
Our platform transforms the research experience through five core pillars:
1. Seamless Federated Search
Powered by Elasticsearch and GraphQL, researchers can now explore datasets across multiple institutions through a single interface—searching metadata, transcripts, and analysis scripts in milliseconds.
2. High-Throughput Streaming
Real-time video and audio streaming reduces download times by up to 80%, with adaptive HLS/DASH delivery across edge-optimized cloud infrastructure. No more waiting hours to view research data.
3. Secure by Design
We implemented a federated authentication model using Shibboleth, OpenID Connect, and role-based access controls. Institutions maintain local identity management, while researchers enjoy seamless SSO and fine-grained access.
4. AI & MLOps Enablement
Integrated with MLflow, Kubeflow, and Jupyter, the platform lets researchers experiment, annotate, and tag datasets with AI-driven insights - without compromising governance or reproducibility.
5. Cloud-Native Foundation
Built on Django REST, PostgreSQL, and React, and orchestrated via Kubernetes and Terraform on AWS, our system is both elastic and cost-effective. We’re also enabling auto-scaling PODs to meet the demands of growing academic networks.
Real Impact, Real Science
“Montrose transformed our platform into a secure, federated ecosystem. Researchers now stream data globally and run AI workflows - without friction.”- Director of Research Data, U.S. Academic Institution
The platform now enables:
Secure collaboration across 1,000+ institutions
GDPR-compliant logging and governance
Immutable archival storage with lifecycle policies
Self-service pipelines for transcription, emotion detection,
HIPAA compliance
What’s Next?
We're actively working on:
Federated AI collaboration through shared notebooks and model versioning
Auto-scaling infrastructure for per - institution deployments
Pluggable analytics modules (e.g., behavioral coding, pattern recognition)
Zero Trust expansion for new medical and academic networks
Build Your Federated Research Ecosystem with Montrose
We understand the complex intersection of research, compliance, and cutting-edge tech. Whether you're looking to modernize legacy infrastructure, implement AI-powered insights, or scale cross-institutional access securely - we can help.
Let’s talk. Our agile, cross-functional team is ready to co-create your next-generation data platform.
