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Institut Curie's health data warehouse

Institut Curie is the first Cancer Research Center, and one of the first healthcare establishments in France, to be granted authorization for its health data warehouse (HDW) to meet the requirements of the CNIL's standards, particularly in terms of security. The aim of Institut Curie is to use this data to support cancer research and innovation, for the benefit of patients.

Institut Curie's HDW¹, authorized by the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (French Data Protection Authority) [CNIL]*, guarantees a secure framework and privileged access to institutional data. Institut Curie is the first Cancer Research Center to comply with CNIL standards, and is one of 22 healthcare establishments whose HDW is the most advanced, and one of 18 whose HDW is already in use.

What is Institut Curie HDW?

Data represent a unique opportunity to support research and innovation in the field of healthcare, in the service of medical progress and patients, and to facilitate the management of hospital activity.

Institut Curie's HDW provides a framework for the Institute's policy on the use and development of first-rate data. It brings together different types of healthcare data: structured clinical data, medical reports, medical imaging, digitized anatomopathology slides, omics data², etc.

The HDW is also a tremendous opportunity for the development of innovation within the digital health ecosystem (academia, industry, start-ups). It complements the strategy of industrial partnerships, recognized by the Carnot label of excellence, by enabling the development of new collaborations around the exploitation of massive data. Having an HDW guarantees that partners can work within a secure, regulated framework.

The HDW accelerates data sharing with other HDWs in France and abroad. Institut Curie is involved in a number of federated HDW projects, such as OncoDS, led by UNICANCER, and the Paris Saclay Cancer Cluster. At European level, Institut Curie is one of 49 European experts on the Advisory Board of the Healthdata@EU pilot project, which aims to build the future European health data space.

Institut Curie's secure HDW in figures (2023):

360,000 cancer patient records
16 million medical reports
2.1 million medical imaging examinations (CT scans, MRIs, PET scans, etc.)
25,000 digitized anatomopathology slides (since 2022)
25,000 molecular analysis examinations per year

Find out more about securing patient data

What is the CNIL standard on health data warehouses?

¹ Institut Curie's Health Data Warehouse is scheduled to go into official operation in 2025.

²"Omics" data capture information on biological processes taking place at different scales of the cell (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics).