Korea opens access to cancer data for 2 million patients
South Korean researchers can now access an expanded gigantic data repository 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 the addition of more data to the K-CURE Public Cancer Library.
Access to K-CURE data, which includes anonymized data on enrolled cancer patients, insurance eligibility and claims, and mortality, has been expanded to include data from 2012 to 2020, according to a press release.
In addition, a dataset on COVID-19 infections and vaccinations collected by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency has been added to the public data library.
Once the necessary permissions are obtained, researchers can access public cancer data via designated data usage centers.
Korea launches $25 million AI drug discovery project
The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare recently announced the launch of a joint project with the Ministry of Science and ICT aimed at discovering and developing fresh medicines using artificial intelligence technologies.
In a statement, the ministry said the 34.8 billion won ($25 million) project will build an AI-based ADME/T predictive model to discover fresh drug candidates. It will be developed through an AI training platform based on federated learning, a machine learning technique that uses data from multiple decentralized sources without exchanging or transferring them.
In the project, carried out by the Korea Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, 20 organizations, including pharmaceutical companies and universities, were selected to refine and verify the resulting artificial intelligence model.
Siriraj Hospital in Thailand Implements AI to Diagnose Lymphoma
The Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University recently implemented AI to aid in the diagnosis of lymphoma.
Based on the press release, the hospital began using an object detection algorithm to detect and count centroblast cells on whole-mount hematoxylin and eosin-stained slides.
“This achievement is important for lymphoma staging as it allows for more accurate classification of patients into stages 1, 2 or 3 based on disease progression,” it explained.
Siriraj Hospital has been implementing AI in its departments since 2018. It plans to introduce AI to analyze mammograms and brain CT scans by the end of the year.