A joint project of Lodz University of Technology and the Polish Mother’s Memorial Hospital – Research Institute, MDB-Medical Data Bank, is an answer to the diagnosed problem of difficult or even impossible digital access to attractive and unique medical data, such as histopathology.
Combining the know-how potential of a renowned technical university with a powerful medical database of one of the most specialised medical institutions in Poland with the highest level of referrals will create a useful and technologically advanced virtual platform. As a result of the project, among others, 1,000,400.00 medical data will be digitised and made available.
The work carried out at TUL is intended to facilitate access to and improve the quality of collected medical data, and to feed the public sector knowledge base. Before the data is made available, it will be digitised, anonymised, grouped, organised and described with metadata. The system will integrate all sources of data possessed and collected by the partners in such a way as to enable access to the collected information while maintaining an adequate level of security.
– says Professor Sławomir Wiak, responsible for project implementation at TUL.
As medics say, digital technology is reshaping the standards of specialists’ work. The vast database of non-digitised data held by the Polish Mother’s Memorial Hospital – Research Institute is an extremely impressive compendium of knowledge. In addition to the Institute’s data, Lodz University of Technology will make the results of proteomic and metabolic research, located at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, available from its resources.
The project will primarily serve the development of oncological diagnostics, through further research on disease entities, which in their current dispersed, non-integrated, analogue form, significantly delay the emergence of innovations or new technologies, necessary for the progress of medicine, slow down research and development work, raising competence and education of medical specialists, university research staff
– explains the Rector of TUL, Professor Krzysztof Jóźwik.
In Poland, there is still no system allowing collection of this type of data with general access. Thanks to the project, it will be possible to make them available for, among others, biometric analyses, didactic work, self-education of doctors, statistics, and they will also serve as a unique source of popular scientific information for the society.
The platform will contain data from the last ten years, which will increase its attractiveness in terms of statistical research in medicine and will show trends in the incidence of cancer in the studied period. It will be possible to draw much more accurate conclusions from such collected material than from images alone. The database will be fed with information during the continuation of the project, i.e. between 2023 and 2028.
Source: Lodz University of Technology
