Genomics. University company to exploit heart data.
This month, Boston University, which directs the Framingham Heart Study, a massive government effort begun in 1948 to monitor the cardiovascular health of more than 10,000 residents of this suburb of Boston, announced plans to form a bioinformatics company that will mine the data. The university will own 20% of Framingham Genomic Medicine Inc., which hopes to raise $21 million to begin modernizing the immense database and packaging it in a format that will be valuable to the pharmaceutical industry. The plan raises a host of difficult ethical issues, including patient privacy, academic conflicts of interest, and reciprocal value to the Framingham residents whose medical data will form the basis for the new enterprise.
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D001675:Bioethics; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000191:economics; D016265:Conflict of Interest; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004345:Drug Industry; D006801:Humans; D007449:Investments; D008404:Massachusetts; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D009316:National Institutes of Health (U.S.); D014481:United States; D014495:Universities / Q000191:economics