The Open Medicine Institute launches novel bioinformatics-healthcare research platform

The Open Medicine Institute (OMI), an organization with a mission to improve health care by applying a multi-disciplinary, "big data" approach, has rolled out its novel OpenMedNet platform designed to improve healthcare. This integrated healthcare model represents a new approach that many experts believe will improve the outlook for patients, especially those suffering from prevalent but complex diseases such as autism, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme, certain cancers and others that have evaded characterisation.

In May 2013, the Open Medicine Foundation was awarded a competitive grant from the VMware Foundation that included financial and consulting support for further development of the OpenMedNet system — a novel software platform that incorporates leading-edge technology for the study and clinical management of disease. After the initial planning process, VMware consulted with several other leading technology companies in the Silicon Valley that were interested in joining the build-out effort. As the design phase began, the project included teams of experts from OMI, VMware, EMC and HPM Networks. The goal was to expand the OpenMedNet architecture to develop a data capture and analytic system able to optimise large amounts of information from patients, healthy volunteers, physicians, researchers and caregivers to help diagnose and treat difficult medical conditions.

"OMI is extremely grateful for the support of the many contributors to the project, including VMware, EMC and Extreme Networks, and subject matter experts at the VARs, including HPM Networks and Kovarus," said Andreas Kogelnik, MD, PhD, founder OMI. "What started out as significant recognition from the VMware Foundation, became an incredibly broad project that was overseen to the last detail by a group of highly skilled people collaborating to solve major scientific and technical challenges."