Mayo Clinic is expanding access to patient data for researchers through a new collaboration with Mercy.
The Rochester, Minn.-based health system said in a Feb. 23 news release that researchers and solution developers can now access decades of high-level, deidentified data from Mercy through Mayo Clinic Platform’s secure infrastructure. Mercy, based in Chesterfield, Mo., operates 55 acute care and specialty hospitals across urban and rural communities in the Midwest and ranks among the 15 largest health systems in the U.S.
By combining data from both organizations, researchers, data scientists and innovators will be able to analyze larger and more diverse patient populations to explore new approaches to diagnosing, treating and preventing disease, according to the release. Mayo Clinic said the broader dataset is intended to reduce demographic bias that can arise from single-institution research and support more representative studies.
With the addition of Mercy’s data, Mayo Clinic Platform now provides visibility into deidentified information from more than 15.2 million patients. The data include 12.6 billion medical images, 3.2 billion lab test results, 10.1 million pathology reports and 1.65 billion clinical notes, according to the release.
Mayo Clinic said its platform uses a secure, privacy-preserving infrastructure that allows each organization to retain full control of its information, with no data transferred between systems.
The collaboration is part of a 10-year agreement between the two organizations focused on transforming healthcare. Mercy is also a founding member of Mayo Clinic Platform Connect, a global health data network that links healthcare innovators with access to curated, deidentified datasets.
Mayo Clinic said additional deidentified patient data from other healthcare organizations participating in the network are expected to become available through the platform later this year.
