Folklore The European alternative to Emedgene (Illumina)

Folklore is a platform from Helena Bioinformatics EOOD in Sofia for clinical genetics laboratories. It classifies and prioritises genetic variants on a rule basis according to ACMG/AMP, according to the provider a whole genome in VCF format in under ten minutes. It supports VCF 4.1/4.2 from gene panels, exomes and genomes as well as uploads of FASTQ, BAM and CRAM, with GRCh38 as reference. The platform covers nuclear variants, mitochondrial DNA, structural and copy number variants, HPO phenotype matching and trio analyses, and produces reports as PDF and DOCX. The same provider also offers the literature search Noodle, which is public and usable without signing in.

According to the documentation, all genomic data is processed and stored on dedicated hardware in a data centre in Helsinki, and no multi-tenant cloud is used. Data never leaves the EU at any processing stage, and the platform makes no outbound network calls during variant processing. Uploaded VCF files are deleted after processing. The privacy policy names Hetzner as infrastructure provider. For the public websites, email, analytics, payments and the public AI assistant, Helena Bioinformatics uses Vercel, Resend, Google, Stripe and OpenAI; according to the privacy policy these providers may process limited personal data outside the EEA, but they are not intended for patient or case data.

No. Folklore describes itself as a clinical decision support tool and explicitly not as a diagnostic device. The platform is not a CE-marked in vitro diagnostic device and carries the label RUO (research use only). It is aimed at professionals such as clinical geneticists, laboratory directors, accreditation auditors and bioinformaticians. A data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR and a data protection impact assessment under Art. 35 GDPR are publicly linked.