Royal Philips (NYSE:PHG) and the Mass. Institute of Technology are teaming up to give medical researchers better access to critical care data.
The medical technology titan said it agreed to give MIT researchers unprecedented access to anonymized data collected on more than 100,000 patients through Philips’ Hospital to Home eICU telehealth program. MIT’s Laboratory of Computational Physiology will serve as the project’s academic “hub,” overseeing access to the database.
“Most in-patient multi-center data sets available to researchers today are limited to insurance claims data, which offers just a summary of a patient’s stay. Through this new initiative, Philips will release a more comprehensive look at the ICU patient’s journey by opening up data sets from patient stays in eICU centers representing approximately 10% of all adult ICU beds in the United States,” the company said in a statement.
“The secure database will include anonymized and detailed clinical data such as vital signs, pharmacy medication orders, laboratory results, diagnoses and severity of illness scores, giving researchers comprehensive insights into a patient stay,” according to the release.
The data will be available to researchers by the end of the year through PhysioNet.
“We’re proud to be leading the charge in the industry by opening up our data to independent researchers to allow them to conduct more meaningful analyses related to critical care medicine,” said Derek Smith, senior vice president of Philips’ Hospital to Home, in prepared remarks.
“This initiative will make it easier for researchers to share methods and findings, bypassing the need to reinvent the wheel with each new research project. We hope this will lead to better, faster breakthroughs,and ultimately better medicine,” Smith said.