(Ottawa, June 16, 2021) Replica Analytics announces a partnership with Health City to join an innovative Alberta collaboration with the Institute of Health Economics, Merck Canada, Alberta Innovates, and the University of Alberta. The project, announced in May , will explore the potential uses for synthetic health data, and will support the acceleration of research in the field of synthetic data use with the ultimate goal of helping improve health outcomes for Canadians.
Synthetic data accurately simulates patient datasets and, although generated from real world data, is not linked to the individuals from whom the data were derived. Synthetic datasets can be readily shared among innovators and researchers without raising patient privacy concerns or contravening the Alberta Health Information Act because the data contains no real patient health information, an important distinction.
The collaborating partners engaged the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (OIPC) to ensure synthetic data can be used in a way that respects the privacy of citizens.
The first phase of the project, which took place in October 2020, validated the first synthetic health dataset in Alberta. The results, lessons learned, and broader vision for applications of synthetic data in Alberta will be presented at the Synthetic Data Summit, to be held on July 7.
“We have made significant advances already in creating synthetic Electronic Health Record (EHR) data while preserving patient privacy as well maintaining high utility, and we are looking forward to expanding boundaries again to enable its broader availability for health innovation and research.”
Khaled El Emam, the CEO of Replica Analytics
About Health City
Health City is a Canadian not-for-profit corporation that works with clinicians, innovators, philanthropic organizations, and companies to develop new pathways of care that can drive better health outcomes and economic development in the health sector. Our focus is on transforming innovations from our health sector into solutions that have commercial application and global relevance, adopting them for impact locally and scaling them for export to global markets.