Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

As the quantity of data generated in all sectors of Canadian life continues to grow exponentially, new tools are needed to amalgamate and analyze them in a secure and reliable way. This is perhaps most evident in the fields of biomedicine and health care, where there is a natural tension between trends in open science that favour the widespread sharing of data, and the need to maintain the privacy and sanctity of personal health information. To fully realize the potential of biomedical Big Data to advance discovery in medicine, new tools are needed to ensure that data can be used to the fullest extent possible, while still protecting the privacy of Canadian patients.To achieve this goal, our team of researchers at Queen's University will partner with Indoc Research, a not-for-profit company that builds research infrastructure focused on data management and analytics. Together we will develop FoRCE - Focus on Research and Clinical Evaluation - a platform for the secure sharing of clinical, physiologic, and genomic data from patients in Canada's Intensive Care Units. These data provide an optimal use case for the development of FoRCE, but will not be its only area of application. The principles applied will translate to other areas of health care, as well as other industries, in which protected data must be shared and analyzed in real time.The FoRCE platform will accelerate discovery-oriented research in critical care, delivering improved outcomes for critically ill and injured patients in Canada and beyond. FoRCE will also strengthen Canada's position in the Information Technology sector, raising the profile of Canadian research and industry in the fast-growing world of data analytics and cybersecurity.