Hitachi Data Systems Collaborates With Universiti Teknologi Petronas On Brain Injury Study

Oct 9, 2015

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., today announced it has signed a research collaboration agreement (RCA) with Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), one of Malaysia’s most prominent universities, with the aim of improving clinical support for traumatic brain injuries.

The partnership will bring together Hitachi Cloud Services Connection (HCSC) – Healthcare, a first-of-its-kind open healthcare cloud platform for analytics, with UTP’s biomedical image analysis and analytics. The study will initially be focused on traumatic brain injuries, integrating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, blood panels and intensive care unit (ICU) data to deliver precise and instant clinical support that can benefit both patients and healthcare professionals. Because HCSC – Healthcare is based on industry standards, any additional medical data can easily be integrated and analyzed throughout the study.

(L-R) Wee Kai Teck, Datuk Mary Yap, Datuk Ir. (Dr.) Abdul Rahim Hashim


The signing ceremony took place during the 2015 Workshop on Intelligent Signal and Imaging for Biometric Applications (WISIBA ’15) at Le Meridien Hotel and was attended by Malaysia’s Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Mary Yap Kain Ching, UTP’s Vice Chancellor, Datuk Ir. (Dr.) Abdul Rahim Hashim, and Hitachi Data Systems’ Managing Director for Malaysia, Wee Kai Teck.

UTP's CISIR (Centre for Intelligent Signal & Imaging Research) is spearheaded by Dr Eric Ho, Senior Lecturer, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Node Coordinator, INCF Malaysia Node.

CISIR was founded in 2000 with the establishment of the first research lab in signal and image processing for medication applications by Prof Fadzil & Prof Venkatachalam.

By 2015, CISIR is hosting the Malaysian Node of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF).



The scientific directions of CISIR in terms of brain research is focusing on three pillars.
  1. Neuroplasticity & rehabilitation
  2. Image & signal neurofeedback
  3. Clinical decision support

One key area of brain research is Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) - a global illness affecting million of people on yearly basis, yet is without effective treatment.

One of the challenge of TBI is that existing technologies are not able to effectively categorise and characterise TBI cases, as a result, any form of TBI is considered severe - this has rendered the failure in identifying effective clinical interventions.

Based on these foundations, the aims of TBI medical research are:
  1. Improved characterisation (precision medicine)
  2. Accurate prognostication (modelling)
  3. CER appraoches for defining effective clinical care

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