Hong Kong health authorities, Science Park offer 200,000 patients’ data to biotech firms free of charge
- Hospital Authority’s Dennis Lee says collaboration with Hong Kong Science Park to share anonymous clinical records may promote development of health technologies
- Data available on self-service platform at park, with applications to access records to face vetting and subject to on-site security measures
Hong Kong health authorities and a city innovation hub have launched a self-service information platform that offers anonymous clinical records from about 200,000 patients free of charge to biotechnology and healthcare companies.
Dennis Lee Pik-kin, senior systems manager for the Hospital Authority, announced the platform’s launch on Thursday and said the collaboration with the Hong Kong Science Park could promote the development of life and health technologies in the city.
“This is really significant because in the current environment, without this set of data, [companies] may rely on some other open-source data, which does not have that amount of data,” he said.
“We want to basically use the healthcare data to support the development of the health science research industry in Hong Kong, as well as supporting better healthcare to Hong Kong patients.”
Lee said applications for the information could include the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and statistics-based models to predict the risk of chronic diseases among patients or for carrying out imaging diagnostics for conditions such as hip fractures.
Grace Lau Sze-ngar, head of the translational research institute at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, said the use of real-world information was crucial in the development of innovations in the biotechnology sector, especially among companies that relied on big data and the creation of AI-based algorithms.