Read medical reports and reference
Enabling Practical Use of Data Privacy
Overview
Physicians may see hundreds of patients per week and cannot possibly remember all the details of past treatments. This often results in valuable insights from similar cases going unused, forcing them to start “from scratch” with each new diagnosis. The developed similarity analysis tool automatically scans patient data and identifies comparable past cases, allowing physicians to quickly see which treatments have been effective.
What problem does our tool solve?
The medical discharge letter – also known as the epikrisis – is one of the most important communication tools among physicians. It includes the course of the disease, therapies, classifications, a summary of the patient’s status, and other relevant information, forming the basis for further treatment.
However, the potential of these documents has so far been largely untapped. Discharge letters are often only available in analog or unstructured formats, may be handwritten or sent by mail, and do not follow a standardized format. This not only complicates documentation but also prevents the systematic analysis of the valuable insights they contain.*
Gain Insights
A large-scale collection of digitized discharge letters could provide valuable insights into therapies, disease progression, and medications. Intelligent analysis of such documents can help identify successful treatment strategies, avoid failures, and uncover new correlations—especially in complex medical cases.
However, data privacy and the lack of structured data currently pose significant barriers. Medical confidentiality, patient rights, and inconsistent document formats make access and analysis extremely challenging.
New resources through digitization
To make this previously untapped resource accessible, an analysis tool has been developed that automatically digitizes, standardizes, and anonymizes discharge letters. This enables the extraction of medical knowledge from existing documents in full compliance with data protection regulations.
The system can be installed locally in clinics or practices, or operated in the cloud. It reads discharge letters, extracts relevant information, and automatically anonymizes personal data. This provides physicians with new research capabilities to identify similar cases and learn from successful treatments—without compromising patient privacy.
Who benefits and how?
Doctors
Can quickly and securely access relevant comparison cases to improve diagnoses and therapies based on data.
Patients
Benefit from more precise diagnoses and personalized treatments.
