Alliance between the Fundació Puigvert and the company IOMED to investigate uro-nephron-andrological diseases

• IOMED Medical Solutions technology significantly reduces the time needed to obtain data for clinical research.

• The implementation of this tool will facilitate the participation of the Fundació Puigvert in multicentre big data and AI projects, which will allow them to improve and optimize the treatment of future patients.

The Fundació Puigvert will promote its research with the artificial intelligence tool developed by IOMED Medical Solutions, which will allow hospital researchers to automate access to clinical data to carry out more studies in less time, with a large volume of data, and at a lower cost. “We already have the first two candidate projects using IOMED technology, one in uro-oncology and the other in hereditary kidney disease. We are in the implementation phase and expectations are high as a tool to promote research in our center”, explains doctor Sílvia Mateu, research coordinator at the Fundació Puigvert.

“This tool will allow our participation in multi-center big data and artificial intelligence projects that will lead to expanding knowledge not only in highly prevalent pathologies such as the different urogenital tumors or chronic kidney disease but also in the field of diseases rare minority where having a large number of cases from the collaboration of many centers in coordination is essential", says Dr. Mateu. “Sharing data on a large scale provides a lot of information about the real experience of patients treated or followed up in the pathologies studied, information that would otherwise be impossible to know. The results of big data studies and AI are essential to improve and optimize the future management and treatment of patients. They have the potential to achieve more effective and personalized medicine”, she adds.

Javier de Oca, CEO and co-founder of IOMED points out about the alliance: “It will make it easier for health professionals and researchers to access stored data in a tenth of the time that would be used in manual data extraction”.

Data anonymization

The tool has been provided by IOMED Medical Solutions to the Fundació Puigvert free of charge. IOMED’s technology transforms the data of the medical records that are written in free text (clinical notes, clinical courses, medical reports of diagnostic tests, discharge reports, reports of surgical interventions, etc.) into encoded and structured data using standard clinical vocabularies (SNOMED, ICD-9, ICD-10, LOINC, etc). This transformation is done through artificial intelligence and natural language processing algorithms that structure all written information. The data is anonymized and stored on the hospital’s servers, which will maintain its governance and custody at all times.

European Federated Clinical Research Network

IOMED is part of the EDHEN project, which seeks to create a federated network of medical data at a European level to improve health research. Within this European initiative, IOMED has processed the data of more than 18 million patients. “Data structuring is the fundamental basis for big data and artificial intelligence projects to address the study of uro-nephron-andrological pathologies in the real environment (real-world data). The transformation of data into OMOP standards will make it easier to carry out internal research projects and, above all, will allow us to participate in a more standardized, easy, and agile way in large-scale projects promoted both by private companies and by collaborative independent research groups. We will be able to choose to participate in large-scale projects at a European level where this technology is of preferential use”, indicates the research coordinator of the Fundació Puigvert. Javier de Oca, CEO and co-founder of IOMED, ​​highlights the importance of this agreement. “This agreement will allow the Puigvert Foundation to be at the forefront of global clinical research.”

About IOMED

IOMED Medical Solutions is a Spanish company based in Barcelona that has developed clinical data extraction and processing technology to structure the Electronic Medical Records stored in hospital centers to maximize the value of all clinical data. Thanks to this Natural Language Processing technology, it makes it easier for professionals and researchers in hospitals to access clinical data and make the most of the value that these can provide to accelerate clinical research and improve healthcare, and always having as a priority the protection and privacy of the data.

About the Puigvert Foundation

The Fundació Puigvert is a monographic health institution in Urology, Nephrology, Andrology and Reproductive Medicine established in 1961 by Professor Antoni Puigvert i Gorro, with the aim of being a benchmark of excellence in these specialties.

Currently, as a university hospital center, privately managed and non-profit, it deals with the study and medical and surgical treatment of pathologies and dysfunctions of the urinary system and the genital apparatus, standing out, especially, for its high expertise in the implementation of robotic surgery applied to Urology and kidney transplants.

Thanks to its long history and the value of a highly specialized medical team with extensive medical, surgical, teaching and scientific experience, the Fundació Puigvert is one of the health centers in Europe with the largest volume of specialized healthcare activity and high clinical excellence in Urology, Nephrology and Andrology. Every year, an average of 5,500 surgeries and around 90,000 medical visits are performed.

Betting on comprehensive, effective and human care for the patient, their family and society in general, but also promoting the development and scientific knowledge of these disciplines through research, training, teaching, dissemination and health education activities. Currently, the Fundació Puigvert is established as a center of reference at a national and international level.