IBM Corp. is working with researchers at the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute in Bologna, Italy, to develop an information system to aid in the treatment and research of rare genetic skeletal diseases.
The BioMedical Imaging Management Solution, called BioMIMS, will integrate images, phenotype and genetic data, and other types of medical information, according to the Armonk, N.Y.-based vendor. This will enable advanced analytics on family trees that the system creates to correlate between patients who show similar signs of the same disease.
The system will collect and classify family histories to aid in collecting data for all patients of these hereditary diseases connected to the same pedigree. Analysis of the pedigree data will aid in diagnoses and help physicians identify new research directions to better understand the correlation between genotype and phenotype (observable characteristics) of the disease.
Development of BioMIMS is scheduled to be complete in mid to late 2010. More information is available at haifa.il.ibm.com/info/200911_BioMIMS.shtml.