A newly-created medical research network, powered by artificial intelligence, has been announced today by OWKIN, and mesothelioma researchers anticipate being among those who will get the greatest benefit. By its own description, OWKIN “creates AI technologies to advance knowledge and discover the medicine of tomorrow by building mathematical models and algorithms that can interpret biomedical images, genomics and clinical data to discover biomarkers and mechanisms associated with diseases and treatment outcomes.” IN doing so, it has now announced the OWKIN Loop Network, linking dozens of hospitals and research facilities in Europe and the United States to create predictive models and share data. It is hoped that this will both speed along drug discoveries and benefit patients through improved treatment.
Among those praising the potentials offered by the OWKIN Loop Network was mesothelioma researcher Françoise Galateau-Sallé, M.D., principal investigator at Centre Léon Bérard, who said, “We are excited to be working with OWKIN to apply AI algorithms to clinical data for mesothelioma research. AI models identified a new subgroup of patients that are poor responders to the standard of care and potential good candidates for immunotherapy.” The platform is the first to gather healthcare industry information and allow researchers to work together in this way. It is believed that it will improve knowledge sharing, particularly in projects where predictive models can help with the problems involving extremely rare cancers, questions of brain age, and other highly complex issues that include only small numbers of advanced researchers’ attention.
Speaking of the benefits that the L0op Network will offer to those moving forward in the battle against mesothelioma and other disease states, Thomas Clozel, M.D., co-founder and CEO of OWKIN said, “Access to patient data is critical for improving medical research. But the current patient data brokerage system hinders knowledge-sharing and risks patient data privacy, resulting in knowledge silos at individual hospitals. We founded OWKIN to efficiently and intelligently transform hospital-level clinical data into predictive models. If we can transform the world’s clinical data into broadly accessible research knowledge, we believe we can fundamentally advance medical research and have an incredibly powerful impact on solving the most important medical challenges.”
As mesothelioma patients wait and hope for a cure, there are many people and organizations available to help. For information on other resources, contact the Patient Advocates at Mesothelioma.net at 1-800-692-8608.
