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Diabetes Action Canada partners with Canadian startup, Bitnobi, Inc., to enable secure and trusted, data sharing
[April 13, 2021]

Diabetes Action Canada partners with Canadian startup, Bitnobi, Inc., to enable secure and trusted, data sharing


TORONTO, April 13, 2021 /CNW/ - Diabetes Action Canada, a national research network focused on transforming the health outcomes for people with diabetes, continues to demonstrate leadership in health data analytics. This has been shown through the launch of the National Diabetes Repository (NDR), and the successful testing of the Bitnobi solution to facilitate data sharing based on privacy and trust that enables the analysis of healthcare data.

In partnership with Bitnobi, Inc., a Canadian startup that has designed and developed a secure data sharing platform, Diabetes Action Canada was able to execute data sharing and linkage activities within the NDR and benchmark against a pre-validated gold standard. A secondary test was also executed that allowed end users in Ontario to interact with primary care data at the Centre for Health Informatics and Analytics (CHIA) at Memorial University. The secondary test demonstrated the ability to share and analyze data without physically transferring data across provincial borders.

The Bitnobi solution allows healthcare data end users an opportunity to access vital health and social data to implement data analysis that will aid in providing timely diabetes care to patients deemed high risk. The use of this software solution offers several benefits for both clinicians and patients, all of which contribute to an improved experience within the healthcare system while adhering to privacy legislation. These benefits include:

  • Eliminating the need to move copies of raw, health data from data owner to end user
  • Providing only the data elements needed to answer the researchquestion
  • Eliminating the end users' contractual obligations for data destruction
  • Enforcing a data owner's data governance rules on data that can be shared with end users
  • Leveraging a 100% web-enabled interface for healthcare researchers to interact with previews of data to construct data queries
  • Securing segments of data so that downstream data analysis activities can be executed in a timely manner instead of waiting for long periods of time to secure raw data

With the successful completion of this first pilot, Diabetes Action Canada is able to accelerate research projects that rely on access to data from different data owners that reside in different jurisdictions. "The administrative delays and financial burdens in securing administrative data for our researchers often results in delayed or missed opportunities to provide timely interventions for persons living with diabetes. With Bitnobi, we finally have a solution that enables data custodians to set their own rules of engagement and allow health service researchers to build data queries based on real-time access to data," says Conrad Pow, Senior Project Manager at Diabetes Action Canada.

Since the beginning of COVID-19, Bitnobi, Inc. saw the need for fast, secure data sharing and Diabetes Action Canada provided the perfect opportunity to initiate the first pilot of this solution. Hassan Jaferi, CEO of Bitnobi, Inc. stated: "The Bitnobi solution can enable de-centralized data sharing across all health sectors by enabling data owners to fully control this technology based on their data governance policies. With Diabetes Action Canada, the speed at which they deployed and tested gave us a clear-cut use case to demonstrate how this solution can speed up trusted access to health data not just within Ontario but across Canada and soon, internationally."


Ongoing Bitnobi activities with Diabetes Action Canada will include usage of the system by approved researchers, implementing distributed, data analytics and the creation of a de-centralized, data sharing network for their researchers.

About Diabetes Action Canada

Diabetes Action Canada is a Strategic Patient Oriented Research (SPOR) Network in Diabetes and its Related Complications, part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) SPOR Program in Chronic Disease. Diabetes Action Canada's mission is to transform the health outcomes of people with diabetes and its related complications. It facilitates important and meaningful connections between patients, their primary healthcare providers, and specialists to improve health care and significant cost savings within the health system.

About Bitnobi

Bitnobi, Inc. is a technology startup focused on the need to safely and securely share data. The patented privacy-protected, data sharing platform does this by keeping the raw data at the source and only sending the aggregate data to the end-user. Instead of creating copies of data, Bitnobi eliminates that need by placing the onus for launching data jobs on the end-user. This is done by ensuring that the end-user meets the data provider's "rules of engagement".

Bitnobi was designed and developed by experts in big data, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. The concept was spun out of research from Dr. Marin Litoiu's laboratory at York University with full support from Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners and Innovation York. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Bitnobi has also received assistance from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Seneca College, National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), Canadian Personalized Health Innovation Network, MaRS Discovery District and the Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst.

SOURCE Bitnobi, Inc.


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