Collaboration is Key

OSIC was created to look at lung diseases differently, and to drive collaboration between unlikely partners. We found the best and brightest from around the globe, and asked them to pool their brain power. We gathered radiologists, clinicians, computational scientists, and industry competitors to help us progress in ways we hadn’t yet considered. They collaborated for almost three years and the outcome – the OSIC Data Repository – is extraordinary

When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary ideas.

Frans Johansson
The Medici Effect

This database is the first of its kind, and the largest and most diverse for rare fibrotic lung diseases. It contains a plethora of real world clinical and imaging data that is both multi-ethnic and multi-center, and it’s changing the way we look at these diseases.
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“OSIC is trying to embed the progress that has been achieved with artificial intelligence over the years into the field of fibrotic lung disease, all with the goal of improved individual prognosis and, subsequently, individual management,” said Dr. Vasilios Tzilas, a pulmonologist in the ILD unit of Greece’s Athens Medical Center. “You can succeed best through cooperation.” 

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Associate Professor Helmut Prosch, Medical University of Vienna, shared similar sentiments. “Fibrosing lung diseases are rare diseases, and research requires a joint effort. Besides the data collection, the repository lifts international cooperation to a new level.”

He continued, “The impact of OSIC will go beyond the research in fibrosing lung diseases. OSIC will not only stimulate AI research in fibrosing lung disease, but will also be a model for similar projects.”