Collaboration and access to data help drive medical innovation. “The future of medical research depends heavily on our ability to collate significant amounts of data, and make that data available for detailed and open scientific investigation,” said Dr. David Barber, University College London and OSIC computation science lead. “It’s a proud moment that OSIC is at the forefront of this movement.”

OSIC is committed to bringing together radiologists, clinicians, computational scientists, and industry competitors from around the world to enable rapid, open source advances in the fight against idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), fibrosing ILDs, and other respiratory diseases, including emphysematous conditions.

The OSIC Data Repository currently houses close to 1,500 anonymized and quality-controlled scans with accompanying data, and has an additional 5,000 in the quality control queue. It is on track to reach its goal of 15,000 anonymized scans, available to OSIC members, by first quarter 2022. And it will use this data to help advance digital imaging biomarkers for accurate imaging-based diagnosis, prognosis and prediction of response to therapy.

“I believe the OSIC Data Repository will be a long lasting and very important scientific contribution, resulting in highly-significant medical benefits for patients,” Dr. Barber added. “Methods and computational resources inevitably improve but without data we cannot even begin to make progress.”

He continued, “It’s important that we try to change the culture around data sharing. Ultimately, data should be shared to improve collective patient benefit (rather than individual researchers or their organizations). Contributing to and joining OSIC means that members will be part of a movement to shift attitudes to data sharing, and make practical steps to improving patient outcomes.”