Korea opens access to cancer data of 2 million patients
Researchers in South Korea now have access to an extensive big-data bank of 2.26 million cancer patients.
The Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), together with the National Cancer Center and the Korea Health Information Service, recently announced that more data has been added to the public cancer library K-CURE.
According to a press release, access to K-CURE data, which includes anonymized data on registered cancer patients, insurance coverage and claims, and mortality rates, has been expanded to include data from 2012 to 2020.
In addition, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency’s COVID-19 infection and vaccination dataset has been added to the public data library.
Once the necessary permits have been obtained, researchers can apply via designated data centers.
Korea launches $25 million AI drug discovery project
The Ministry of Health and Welfare recently announced that it has launched a joint project with the Ministry of Science and ICT to discover and develop new drugs using AI technology.
In a statement, the ministry said the 34.8 billion won ($25 million) project will build an AI-powered ADME/T prediction model to discover new drug candidates. It will be developed through an AI training platform based on federated learning, a machine learning technique that taps data from multiple, decentralized sources without exchanging or moving them.
The project, which is being conducted by the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association, has selected 20 participating organizations, including pharmaceutical companies and universities, to improve and verify the resulting AI model.
Thailand’s Siriraj Hospital Uses AI to Diagnose Lymphoma
The Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University recently deployed AI to support the diagnosis of lymphoma.
Based on a press release, the hospital has begun using an object detection algorithm to identify and count centroblast cells in whole slides stained with hematoxylin and eosin.
“This development is important for the grading of lymphomas, as patients can now be more accurately classified into stage 1, 2 or 3, depending on the course of the disease,” it was explained.
Siriraj Hospital has been implementing AI in all its departments since 2018. By the end of the year, the hospital aims to implement AI for the analysis of mammograms and CT scans of the brain.