Medicom, OSIC Join Forces to Expand Access to Anonymized Clinical Data

Medicom Technologies is partnering with the Open Source Imaging Consortium (OSIC) to extend access to anonymized clinical information — key for the detection and diagnosis of rare diseases, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and other interstitial lung diseases (ILDs). 

Both organizations recognize the importance of data in building up and advancing patient care, especially in the accuracy of diagnostics based on imaging, disease prognosis, and response to treatment.

Thus, Medicom developed deepMed, a system that helps OSIC and several other life science organizations source clinical data for research, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. 

“Medicom’s partnership with OSIC has advanced our shared goal: improve access to imaging data needed in the fight against rare diseases,” Michael Rosenberg, Medicom’s CEO and co-founder, said in a press release. 

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Throughout the years, the healthcare industry has avoided data sharing due to complicated reasons, including problems with compliance, private data protection, and organizational politics.

“We have to solve the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis problem first, and I don’t want to lose sight of that,” said Elizabeth Estes, OSIC’s executive director. “But I think we do have a societal obligation to fix this ecosystem that has allowed this to go on for so long.”

As such, OSIC’s aim is to advocate and influence a cultural shift in healthcare, which may bring better understanding and possible cures to diseases that have affected thousands of lives across the U.S.

As a nonprofit cooperative between academia, industry, and patient advocacy groups, the consortium was formed to enable quick, open-source advances in identifying and diagnosing IPF and ILDs using digital imaging and machine learning. 

This mission motivated the creation of the OSIC Data Repository, released in 2021, the world’s largest and most diverse ILD repository. It is committed to storing more than 16,000 anonymized high-resolution CT scans with related clinical data, both multi-ethnic and multi-center. 

Medicom, the creator of the first Federated Health Information Network, continues to help OSIC add anonymized, comprehensive information to this dataset.

The company allows providers, patients, and research organizations to search for and share clinical data. It strives to help clinicians and researchers to advance patient care and support the development of new treatments through data and insights from its network.

“Building context rich imaging datasets presents several technical challenges; at the same time, access to this type of data is increasing in importance, as researchers begin to rely on imaging biomarkers,” Rosenberg said.

Medicom’s partnership with OSIC has advanced our shared goal: improve access to imaging data needed in the fight against rare diseases

Providers, patients, and research organizations can search and share clinical data

Medicom deepMed was designed and based on the building blocks of another system, called ImageX, an accessible database for clinical images and reports. 

Because of its access to the national network of multiple data and secure automation, deepMed is an essential contributor to the OSIC Data Repository. 

For next year, OSIC and Medicom are planning to extend their commitment to research, machine learning, and AI initiatives, to benefit patients facing ILDs and other rare or cancerous diseases.

In addition, 2023 will bring an expansion of care access to the Veteran Care Community, with OSIC helping healthcare professionals build algorithms — used to perform calculations and data processing — that may provide answers and change lives.

“Our partnership with OSIC has helped us put these important datasets into the hands of researchers and clinicians committed to fighting rare diseases at a faster pace than traditional commercial data curation efforts,” Rosenberg said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with OSIC.”