€4.4m Linked2Safety EU project leverages electronic medical records

21 Nov 2012

The Quadrangle at NUI Galway

Linked2Safety, a new €4.4m EU project to help medical practitioners make decisions and improve safety in clinical research, is using the latest web technologies to leverage the wealth of information in electronic medical records.

A team of researchers from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway) are behind Linked2Safety. Work on the project involves the development of a medical and clinical data management infrastructure.

The researchers’ job will be to imbue meaning into the data housed in the European healthcare information space, and to connect that data. To do so, the project will use ‘linked-data’ and other semantic technologies developed by DERI.

“So much valuable information sits in seclusion in medical records in hospitals across Europe. They have the potential to significantly help and advance medical research, as well as improve health policies,” said Ronan Fox, Health Care and Life Sciences leader at DERI.

“What we need to do is put in place a framework so that the information can be interconnected, this could lead to all kinds of possibilities. For example, within the context of the data governance, and legal and ethical framework created in Linked2Safety, individuals could be identified to join a clinical trial for a rare disease, whether they are in Ireland or Cyprus.”

Linked2Safety is an FP7 project funded by the European Commission under the area of ICT for health.

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com