The consortium of Theragen ETEX and Seoul
National University (SNU) R&D Foundation said that it has begun full-scale
development of the Healthcare Big Data Showcase Project after filing for an
institutional review board deliberation on detailed tasks.
Building a healthcare big data showcase is
the core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution-based healthcare development
strategy promoted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Recently, the ministry
selected SNU R&D Foundation and Teragen Etex Consortium as the leading
project operators.
The project will lay the standardizing foundation
to accumulate and utilize various healthcare data, including genomes, lifelogs,
medical and examination records. It also aims to enhance the technological
competitiveness of big data.
Five other institutions are also
participating in the project -- Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul
National University Bundang Hospital, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Gangnam
Severance Hospital and LG CNS.
The government will provide 2.3 billion won
($1.9 billion) to help finance the project in the first 10 months and extend
the contract for two years, depending on the project’s progress.
The two lead players plan to recruit data
providers from among cancer patients, other chronic patients, and the general
public, as well as from public organizations, such as the National Health
Insurance Service, Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, hospitals,
and companies.
Based on the data, the consortium will
build a healthcare big data showcase that can integrate healthcare data among
the parties involved and make the most of national healthcare infrastructure
that can cover all aspects of the field.
Primary business areas are laying the
foundation for healthcare data collection, production, and management,
collecting and producing healthcare datasets, and establishing a privacy model.
To this end, the consortium plans to
develop guidelines and processes of international standards for data
production, management and processing. They also will collect various data to
produce a comprehensive healthcare dataset.
Specifically, the consortium will build
digital virtual self-system, which is a digital medical device based on
advanced data integration technology and security system, extracting and
standardizing healthcare data through integrated modeling of clinical information
and bio information.
“The consortium will
secure a variety of source technologies by generating, collecting,
accumulating, analyzing and utilizing healthcare big data, to expand the
national health care base and create an institutional basis,” Theragen Etex CEO
Hwang Tae-soon said.
