Hong Kong health bosses to unleash big data on medical records
But questions remain over how and where researchers will be able to get at the information
Health officers in Hong Kong have started work on a big data platform which will eventually allow researchers to analyse anonymised medical records.
Scholars have said they hoped the platform would mean easier access to information without creating extra hurdles, as officials grapple with questions of what data to open up and where users will access it.
The plan comes after Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced in her October policy address that the Hospital Authority, which manages the city’s public hospitals, would develop a big data system.
The idea behind the system is to identify useful patterns in the records to help shape policy and ease medical research.
Dr Cheung Ngai-tseung, the authority’s head of information technology and health informatics, said work on the platform had begun this year.
“The Hospital Authority’s data will be made available to academia,” Cheung said. “The massive amount of data could facilitate machine learning.”
