A key element in the success of the pilot was the development of Bio21:MMIM as a federated data warehouse, enabling health and medical researchers to maintain control over databases of sensitive clinical research information, satisfy privacy legislation, and meet the ethics requirements of public and medical watchdogs.

Richard Hill, partner for Healthcare and Business Consulting Services at IBM Australia, said Bio21:MMIM uses open architecture so the system does not require participants to restructure their data or lose any autonomy over their patient information.

As a virtual repository, Bio21:MMIM also meets stringent ethics, privacy and security requirements. At the same time, it is highly flexible and scalable and can easily accommodate new researchers and data sets.

Bio21:MMIM assigns a unique identifier to the clinical research data so that it can be shared by researchers without revealing identifying information.

Yet the unique identifier can enable a patient's physician to contact the patient should the research reveal scope for new diagnosis or treatment. Re-identification and contact can only be done with ethics committee approval and by the treating institution.

The result of the research using Bio21:MMIM could be the identification of target components of new diagnostic tools and novel therapeutic targets. These could lead to earlier, safer and more effective diagnosis and treatment which will delay or prevent diseases, reducing morbidity and the consequent need for ongoing medical care.

Bio21:MMIM research has already produced five discoveries, which are being presented to the international scientific community. These include information about the impact of diabetes on colorectal cancer, ways to diagnose colorectal cancer at earlier stages, and information on how epilepsy diagnosis and treatment is affected by patient genetics and phenotype.

Suchalee Pongprasert

The Nation