What's the problem?
Medical researchers and healthcare systems generate vast amounts of data every single day. If linked up and harnessed, it could revolutionise medicines development and healthcare. However, most of this ‘big data’ remains in silos, inaccessible to most researchers, its potential untapped. Meanwhile digital technologies and wearable devices offer new and more efficient ways of gathering data, but question marks remain about how to address issues like patient privacy and how these devices fit in with patients’ lives.
What is IMI doing about it?
IMI has had ‘big data’ projects since its creation. Project outputs include the EHR4CR project’s platform that enables controlled access to hospitals’ data for the preparation of clinical trials. The platform has demonstrated its usefulness in speeding up the recruitment of patients, while ensuring that patient privacy is respected. The Open PHACTS Discovery Platform links up existing data sources and allows scientists to rapidly answer complex questions in drug development. And the EMIF project used existing data to generate new insights into Alzheimer’s disease. Today, IMI’s Big Data for Better Outcomes programme is addressing the technical, legal and ethical issues that currently prevent researchers from making full use of the data that is out there. What’s more, the projects are putting ‘big data’ principles into practice to advance research in the fields of cardiovascular disease, haematological malignancies (blood cancers), Alzheimer’s disease, and prostate cancer. IMI also boasts a number of projects working on health-related mobile and digital technologies.
IMI research is...
...cutting down on the time it takes to carry out clinical trials | EHR4CR's software helps clinical trial managers make sure they can recruit enough patients for their studies, while Pharmaledger matches the right patients to the right trials. EU-PEARL is testing out trials that share a control group while testing multiple drugs from different companies at the same time, and Trials@Home is piloting trials that run remotely, making it easier on participants and generating more and better data. | ||
… showing how real-world electronic data records can be used to make quick, evidence-based decisions |
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...finding out what aspect of their condition patients care most about |
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…using personal devices, apps and motion sensors to bring clinical trials home |
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