In 2025, Building 'K-Cancer' Big Data through Medical Big Data Platform

Ministry of Health and Welfare CI (Photo by Ministry of Health and Welfare)

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Chun-hee] The government is promoting the 'K-Cancer' project to create big data of clinical information on cancers frequently occurring in Koreans, such as stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, and lung cancer. Subsequently, the plan is to expand to other health care data including 'K-Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular', 'K-Respiratory (including emerging infectious diseases)'.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 3rd that it reported this content as part of the 'Health Care Data and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Strategy' at the '126th National Policy Issue Inspection and Coordination Meeting' on the same day.

The Ministry will prioritize standardization in fields with high demand and usability, such as Personal Generated Health Data (PGHD). PGHD refers to symptoms, biometric data, and other information created, recorded, or collected by individuals through wearable devices or mobile applications. By accumulating this information to create big data, it is possible to generate medical and industrial value.

The Ministry also revealed plans to complete three major source data platforms centered on bio data such as genomics, hospital clinical records, and public health care data by 2025. It will build an integrated bio big data infrastructure for a total of one million people, including 100,000 with rare diseases, 100,000 with cancer, 200,000 with intractable diseases, and 600,000 chronic patients and healthy individuals. This big data will be promoted as a national strategic asset for use in personalized treatment and precision medicine.

Measures to support data brokerage and distribution have also been prepared. To this end, specialized personnel for consulting support will be trained, and institutions holding big data such as the National Health Insurance Service and medical data-centered hospitals will be evaluated for their capability to safely provide data and designated as 'Safe Distribution Centers.'