Biotech firms given access to hospital patient data

The Hospital Authority (HA) on Thursday launched a "data collaboration lab" to share patient healthcare information with biotech companies to support research and innovation in the sector. The authority said data collected between 2007 and 2017 on 200,000 randomly selected patients will be made available to certain firms at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks. Dennis Lee, senior systems manager with the HA, said the move could help the development of new technologies to speed up the diagnosis of conditions and allow patients to receive earlier treatment. "We want to basically use the healthcare data to support the development of health science research in Hong Kong and also the healthcare research industry, as well as supporting better healthcare to our Hong Kong patients," he said. "We use real-world data and that is actually able to help us develop AI models or statistical models to predict the risk of a chronic disease patient, as well as to do some image diagnosis." Dr Grace Lau, head of the Institute for Translational Research at HKSTP, said the large and unique healthcare database will be a boon for tech firms when it comes to research and development. "This structured database is very rare to be able to be accessed by biotech start-up companies," she said. "This is why we believe building this collaboration, enabling the use of patient data, will enable many start-ups in the biotech area, biomedical technology area, to further flourish and help them to grow in terms of their innovation and development." The HA said data on more patients could be shared in future, but there are no privacy issues being as the subjects will remain anonymous.