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.
Lawler
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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