NEW YORK – Canadian bioinformatics firm DNAstack on Wednesday announced the launch of the Canadian Platform for AI in Health, a consortium focused on improving patient outcomes by establishing national and international artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for genomics and health.
The consortium aims to streamline DNAstack's Omics AI data-sharing software suite and to develop new Omics AI features and related products, such as tools allowing scientists to ask high-level questions of their data without revealing sensitive information, the ability to leverage large language models to ask research questions in plain English, and further integrating Omics AI with third-party applications.
The consortium expects these efforts to accelerate research into disease areas such as oncology, neuroscience, infectious disease, and rare disease.
The C$17.5 million (US$12.24 million) project is funded with C$11.4 million from consortium partners and C$6.1 million from Canadian technology incubator DIGITAL. Consortium members include Autism Speaks, Valence Digital, Pacific Biosciences Canada, and SickKids.
"By making it easier and safer for AI to learn from our collective healthcare experiences, we stand to significantly improve diagnostics, treatments, and outcomes for patients and families," DNAstack CEO Marc Fiume said in a statement.
Omics AI is being used in a number of research efforts around the globe. Pacific Biosciences is using it as part of a collaboration with Asian healthcare centers to improve the diagnosis and treatment of subfertility and recurrent miscarriages. It also serves as the framework for a free-to-access multiomic data portal used to discover diagnostic biomarkers and treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.