SeDI

In recent decades, advancements in digital radiology, digital pathology, aswell as the 'age of -omics' (genomics, proteomics, microbiomic, etc), have generated massive healthcare data repositories, particularly in radiology, with data volumes reaching tens of terabytes for an average-sized hospital. This "big data" is valuable for achieving more accurate diagnoses, better treatment planning, and enhanced clinical decision support systems. The potential economic value of big data for the US healthcare system alone was estimated at $300 billion.

Despite its potential, a significant obstacle exists in the form of the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) standard, which was designed in the early 80s. DICOM's syntactical nature limits optimal analysis and processing of data, similar to a search engine providing irrelevant results due to syntactical matching without understanding the meaning. Semantic web technology, capable of providing meaning to data, is proposed as a solution to unlock the full potential of healthcare data. However, such solutions are not yet commercially available.

Challenges also arise from the diversity of data silos in healthcare, where different departments use various silos from different vendors with different formats. SOHARD Software GmbH has introduced a concept for a semantic adapter for DICOM-based systems, allowing semantic querying of multiple existing DICOM-based data repositories. This concept garnered significant interest, highlighting the urgent need for such a system. This project aims to develop and validate the first semantic web adapter and standalone PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) that can revolutionize access and analysis of medical data, unlocking its true value for patients, industry, academia, and society.

This project was awarded funding by Eurostars in 2013.