In this particular project, we are aiming to build a pre-clinial in silico lab to support research and innovation projects within precision medicine. It will serve as a test bed for development of prototype research and development activities. There are several concerns related to security and privacy restrictions on patient data that need to be addressed. Both clinical and genomic data have to be properly anonymized for research and development purposes. Patient consents are needed in order to extract patients’ data from the laboratory and EHR systems. The process of extracting data from these systems need to be automated, as well as the transfer of genomic data files generated from the instruments and the bioinformatics pipelines in the laboratory. The correct firewalls and access controls to the in silico lab will also have to be established.

We will initially build an in silico lab at the University Center for Information Technology (USIT) through their Service for Sensitive Data (TSD) at the same time as Sykehuspartner is working to replicate the laboratory within the hospital network. The BigMed pre-clinical in silico lab in the hospital network will be within a secure environment for high volume data storage, analysis and will with time incorporate high performance computing (HPC). USIT already has HPC in their TSD network. All clinical and genomic data made available on the platform will be based on patient consents as well as approval from the Regional Ethics Committee.

The pre-clinical platform's enterprise architecture team will ensure that piloting in BigMed is done in a realistic setting with the full complexity of the clinic. This project addresses the technological issues, while the legal issues related to this platform are addressed in another BigMed-project.


Partners: Sykehuspartner, University Center for Information Technology, IBM, DIPS, Oslo University Hospital IT-department