The LOOP Zürich Biomedical Informatics Platform

With the increasing digitalization of medicine, patient data have become ubiquitous with access to ever-larger sets of clinical information. Powerful computational approaches allow us to capitalize on this data and to generate novel medical insights by using predictive models of increasing precision for disease outcome and treatment efficacy. There is little doubt that we see the emergence of data-driven medicine, in which data and algorithms increasingly shape how we diagnose and treat patients.

The LOOP Zurich is establishing a central BioMedical Informatics Platform – The LOOP Zurich BioMedical Informatics Platform (BMI Platform) – across four university hospitals in Zurich, i.e., the University Hospital Zurich (USZ), the University Children’s Hospital Zurich (Kispi), the Balgrist University Hospital (Balgrist) and the University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich (PUK) together with the two universities ETH Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich (UZH).

The platform will allow for translational data-driven research involving routine clinical data. It is an integral part of The LOOP Zurich’s precision medicine vision and aims to be compatible with national and international biomedical data sharing initiatives.

The LOOP Zurich pursues a data-driven medicine approach. By combining the tremendous amount of clinical information collected in clinical data warehouses of Zurich’s four university hospitals, The LOOP Zurich Biomedical Informatics Platform (BMIP) will be established. It will enable researchers to achieve novel insights into etiology and progression of diseases, fostering the development of highly specific diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the benefit of patients.

Podcast about the BMIP with Beatrice Beck Schimmer and Michael Krauthammer (German)