(Yicai) May 13 -- Guangzhou has published the initial results of its initiative to build a trusted data-sharing platform for the healthcare sector, as the major southern Chinese city works to open up the flow of medical data in order to speed up of the development of new technologies, drugs and medical devices through greater access to health information.

The initial achievements of the Guangzhou Trusted Data Space platform, which is being developed by the Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission and Guangzhou Digital Technology Group, include five data products, such as a distribution diagram of common infection markers of pneumonia in children, as well as 28 high-quality data sets that cover diseases such as cerebrovascular disorders, liver cancer, brain infarctions, as well as weight trends among the elderly.

The Guangzhou Trusted Data Space, which is still under construction, is a public service platform designed to store trusted data and to establish mechanisms for data sharing, Li Tiegang, deputy director of the health commission, said at the press conference.

The platform will facilitate collaboration between hospitals, research organizations and biomedical companies and help them leverage healthcare data resources, create new cross-level, cross-organizational and cross-functional health-related tools and advance the implementation of ‘AI+’ medical and health applications, he added.

The data in the system has been de-identified or desensitized, meaning all personal info has been removed to allow for general research, said Ye Zhanjun, deputy head of the radio and television research institute under the Guangzhou Data Group. If someone needs access to personal data, the patient’s explicit permission must be obtained.

Once the new data-sharing setup is up and running, hospitals and biomedical companies will be able to share anonymized data with each other, said Zhang Peng, deputy director of Southern Medical University’s Zhujiang Hospital. This will speed up the development of new technologies, drugs and medical devices.

Before, hospitals could only use their own internal data, Zhang said. Insufficient case numbers often delayed or hindered potential breakthroughs in the research of specialized treatments.

Digital Transformation

This trusted data space is expected to accelerate the digital transformation of local hospitals, said Hua Jun, head of the health commission's information and statistics department.

High-quality data in this trusted space will become tradable, with higher-quality data commanding greater premiums, Hua said. This will allow hospitals to make money from digitalization and will shift their perception that IT departments only cost money.

In the next phase, Guangzhou will link this data-sharing platform with the city’s health big data platform and expand data sources to all hospitals across the city. Eventually, this will form high-quality data sets for the treatment of specific diseases.

Over time, all the city’s health management institutions, hospitals and biomedical firms will join this trusted data space, the commission said. More than 50 third-party data service providers will be introduced and data sharing links with medical institutions across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will be established, the commission said.

Editor: Kim Taylor