Myongji Hospital opened the "New Horizon AI and Big Data Center," and held a symposium to commemorate its opening, on Tuesday.

The new center will set up an application system for a wide range of healthcare areas, including clinical care, medical research, and medical device development, using artificial intelligence (AI) based on clinical data obtained from Myongji and other hospitals.

The center will operate a two-track project, with the big data platform supporting professors' medical research and thesis work with big data and AI opening the way to extend research output to more specialized medical fields.

Myongji Hospital will operate the center in collaboration with the hospital's "Nano IT Convergence Research Institute," which opened in 2010. The hospital plans to develop the newly opened center into a larger AI and big data research institute.

The proposed institute will conduct researches using cohort DB, participate in common data model business, establish clinical data warehouse (CDW), and pursue the coding and non-identification of hospital and healthcare information.

'We are pleased to open the New Horizon AI and Big Data Center at a time when creating medical value information through the convergence of big data and AI is an important topic," Myongji Hospital Chairman and CEO Lee Wang-jun said. "The creativity in the clinical field using big data and AI will determine the outcome of the center."

The hospital will also actively support the center if only it has good ideas, research themes and clear directions, Lee added.