Briefs

Boston Globe (July 17, 2002) reports that AnVil, a small bioinformatics firm in Burlington, is hoping to unveil potentially lucrative secrets hidden inside the reams of patient data collected by one of the nation's largest network of health-care providers.

The company is set to announce today that it has reached a deal with Birmingham, Ala.-based HealthSouth to apply its experience in analyzing complex databases for drug researchers to HealthSouth's mammoth repository of patient records.

The companies are betting on the analysis, which will focus on drugs to treat stroke and orthopedic patients, to produce insights that will not only help HealthSouth improve medical care but also aid drug makers in their efforts to discover and develop new drugs.

The deal highlights a growing perception among drug researchers that a wealth of knowledge is buried in databases of patient records kept by hospitals, managed-care organizations, and other health-care providers. The hope is that such data could reveal how drugs work in real-world settings, shedding light on questions that are not answered in tightly controlled clinical trials.

To protect patients' privacy, the records will be stripped of any information that would identify particular individuals. And only insights gained from the data, not the data itself, will be sold to pharmaceutical and biotech companies -- a distinction Hicks believes largely eliminates the ethical concerns.

See http://digitalmass.boston.com/sectors/biotech/news/071702.html