On A Quiet Sat. Morning: "It's About The Information, Marty!" [Ref. "Sneakers" (1992).] New Merck Deep Data Mining Deal, In The West...

So -- it is said that the future belongs to those who. . . "control the information". Doubly so (in life-sciences, at least), once that vast data store is deeply cross-indexed, and digitized for near real time retrieval and analysis. Last year, Merck put about $10 million into a spinoff from the mountain west based not for profit network of 33 hospitals -- to index and digitize about four decades of patient records (something like five million bits of data, growing at a pace of 300,000 bits per year, now) -- while being careful to de-identify the data.

Now that has been mapped onto the labs' specimen samples, so sample data is connected to anonymous patient profiles -- again, across a 40 year time span. That trove of US patient data not only helps identify future therapy approaches, but may aid in recruiting new study patients, for pembrolizumab's ongoing flotilla of clinical trials.

Smart -- but I will admit to being a little concerned about. . . data security, and privacy here. [Just how robust is the hardening of the database, vis-a-vis would be intruders? Of course, neither company will highlight that. See. . . "Sneakers" (1992).]

In any event, here's the story -- from FierceBiotech's reporting, earlier this week:

. . .Merck & Co. signed a R&D collaboration deal with data and technology provider Culmination Bio, a recent spinoff from Intermountain Health.

Under the deal, Merck gets access to Culmination’s clinical records and bio specimen data collected from several cohorts. . . .

Culmination has exclusive rights to a physical library and cloud-based data pool that spans more than 40 years of de-identified patient electronic health records and paired biospecimen data as part of a partnership with Intermountain. The data can be used to dramatically speed clinical trial recruitment for pharmaceutical research.

Financial terms of the agreement weren't disclosed. . . .

Onward, grinning -- these hospitals span Utah, Colorado, Nevada and Idaho, at least -- if memory serves. And as a rule, those patients will likely be. . . healthier, as a group, than their Southeast or Northeast counterparts. Fascinating. [I wonder if Merck has taken that into account. It might make the clinical trials' side effect data. . . milder, compared to an overall less healthy co-hort.]



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