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Using innovative synthetic data, this new platform will empower healthcare providers and researchers to develop the next generation of precision medicine tools.
Researchers at Trinity College Dublin and European partners have launched a new platform to share, search and analyse healthcare data, with the aim of accelerating healthcare innovation.
Co-ordinated by the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI) at St James’s Hospital, and supported by 26 partner organisations across Europe, the Synthetic Healthcare Data Governance Hub (SEARCH) was launched yesterday (1 October) to bring together data experts, healthcare providers and solution developers to unlock new opportunities in data-driven healthcare.
SEARCH will generate ‘FAIRified’ synthetic healthcare data – data that is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable – to train artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models, enabling large-scale data collaborations while maintaining privacy.
With the trained models, the initiative aims to support diagnostics, personalised treatment and predictive health outcomes, improving patient care while reducing privacy risks.
“SEARCH offers an unparalleled opportunity to accelerate research and clinical innovation. By providing high-quality, FAIR synthetic datasets that mimic real-world healthcare data, we can empower researchers, clinicians and industry to collaborate like never before,” said Prof Aideen Long, who is project lead and director of TTMI.
“This opens the door for faster drug discovery, more personalised treatments, and the ability to create new, evidence-based healthcare policies – all without compromising patient privacy.”
Synthetic data is created by algorithms and simulations based on generative AI technologies to replicate the statistical properties of real-world data. Organisations use synthetic data when real-world data is unavailable or cannot be used to train systems due to privacy concerns.
Prof Dimitris Iakovidis from the University of Thessaly said that SEARCH “will empower healthcare providers and researchers with high-quality data to fuel next-generation AI and precision medicine tools”.
The platform is funded under the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking with an initial budget of €15.2m.
Earlier this year, Google DeepMind proved the capabilities of synthetic data generation when its AlphaGeometry AI model was able to solve complex high-level geometry problems after being trained by a vast pool of synthetic data.
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