Hitachi Data Systems Collaborates With Universiti Teknologi Petronas on Brain Injury Study

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced it has signed a research collaboration agreement (RCA) with Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), one of Malaysia’s most prominent universities, with the aim of improving clinical support for traumatic brain injuries. The partnership will bring together Hitachi Cloud Services Connection (HCSC) – Healthcare, a first-of-its-kind open healthcare cloud platform for analytics, with UTP’s biomedical image analysis and analytics. The study will initially be focused on traumatic brain injuries, integrating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, blood panels and intensive care unit (ICU) data to deliver precise and instant clinical support that can benefit both patients and healthcare professionals. Because HCSC – Healthcare is based on industry standards, any additional medical data can easily be integrated and analyzed throughout the study.

The signing ceremony took place during the 2015 Workshop on Intelligent Signal and Imaging for Biometric Applications (WISIBA ’15) at Le Meridien Hotel and was attended by Malaysia’s Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Mary Yap Kain Ching, UTP’s Vice Chancellor, Datuk Ir. (Dr.) Abdul Rahim Hashim, and Hitachi Data Systems’ Managing Director for Malaysia, Wee Kai Teck.

“Today’s announcement signals yet another step forward in medical research; connecting industry leading technology solutions with diagnostic imaging and data to improve analytics and information mapping for patients. Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS has been involved in the field of neurosciences for some time and has a wealth of patient data that we start to integrate immediately with the aim of giving us better insight for these types of injuries,” commented Mark Ablett, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific, Hitachi Data Systems.

UTP Vice Chancellor, Datuk Ir. (Dr.) Abdul Rahim Hashim said,“This project marks another milestone in the collaboration between Hitachi and Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, which was started in 2011. Our Center for Intelligent Signal & Imaging Research (CISIR) will work closely with HDS and clinical partners from Prince Court Medical Center, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Malaya to develop this new application for traumatic brain injury patients. CISIR was appointed as 1 of 14 Higher Institution-Center of Excellence in Malaysia by the Ministry of Higher Education and is one of our leading centers, undertaking transformation towards world-acclaimed research.”

CISIR Director, Prof Ir. Dr. Ahmad Fadzil Mohd Hani said,“This research will be part of a global study in traumatic brain injury which is under the umbrella of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF). We are very pleased to be collaborating with HDS. The technology behind HCSC – Healthcare is a wonderful complement to our core competency in biomedical signal and image processing.”