Emory Healthcare and healthcare software provider nference have struck an alliance to broaden access to a variety of de-identified data, aiming to expedite research, disease diagnoses, and the development of new treatments.

Emory Healthcare includes 11 hospitals and the Emory Clinic, as well as over 250 provider locations.

It focuses on cancer care, elderly care, neurology/neurosurgery, obstetrics/gynaecology, and urology and is partnering with nference to enhance research in these fields.

This collaboration aims to broaden the nference federated data network by incorporating varied multimodal clinical and imaging data to advance real-world evidence research and the development of AI models.

It intends to utilise nference's advanced capabilities to securely de-identify health information. This will offer Emory Healthcare insights into diseases, treatments, and patient outcomes.

Emory Healthcare and Emory University chief data and analytics officer Joe Depa said: “This collaboration with nference allows us to join a federated data network of leading institutions that will enable ground-breaking research.”

In September 2022, nference introduced the nSights platform, which facilitates research by utilising the federated data network.

This offers customers access to insights from a curated, de-identified dataset covering various therapeutic areas such as cardiology, oncology, metabolic diseases, immunology, and infectious diseases.

The platform enables researchers and healthcare professionals to advance discovery and speed up development by creating specific cohorts for extensive research, while safeguarding patient privacy.

nference co-founder and CEO Murali Aravamudan said: “As we continue to advance deep collaborations with the world's best academic medical centres, our multimodal AI platform will enable the discovery of life-saving medicines, advance the development of next-generation diagnostics and interventions, and transform clinical practice at an unprecedented scale.”