Thread by @NightingaleOS

Tomorrow at #NeurIPS we’re launching Nightingale Open Science, a computing platform giving researchers access to massive new health imaging datasets

We hope Nightingale will help solve some of the biggest medical problems of our time

What makes these datasets special? (1/8)

Our datasets are curated around medical mysteries—heart attack, cancer metastasis, cardiac arrest, bone aging, Covid-19—where machine learning can be transformative

We designed these datasets with four key principles in mind: (2/8)

1. Each dataset begins with a large collection of medical images: x-rays, ECG waveforms, digital pathology (and more to come)

These rich, high-dimensional signals are too complex for humans to see or fully process—so machine vision can add huge value (3/8)

2. Each image is linked to at least one ground truth outcome: data on what happened to the patient, not a doctor’s interpretation of the image

This allows researchers to build algorithms that learn from nature—not from humans (4/8)

The data are diverse: we work with health systems across the US and the world, including under-resourced ones whose data aren’t usually represented in machine learning

This lets the resulting algorithm speak to the needs of diverse populations (5/8)

Access is secure and ethical: all data are completely deidentified; as an extra precaution, no download is allowed

We carefully track everything anyone does on the platform. Only non-commercial use is allowed, so the knowledge generated from the data benefits everyone (6/8)

The full-day #NeurIPS2021 launch workshop will include a product demo and panel discussions with top minds in computer science, technology, and medicine, including @EricSchmidt @BarzilayRegina @JenniferChayes @AneeshChopra @EricTopol

nightingalescience.org/conferences-20… (7/8)

More generally, we hope you’ll join our mission and sign up for data access here: nightingalescience.org (8/8)