When and why was ITTM founded?
ITTM was founded in 2015. In the beginning, our primary focus was the management and curation of preclinical and clinical data for pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as public institutions. In 2020, we added a new area, digital health services. These two services are interwoven, like the yin and yang in Chinese philosophy.
What do your data management and curation services consist of?
We help our customers make their numerous, complex and heterogeneous data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). Our data management services include cleansing of preclinical and clinical data, validation harmonization and standardization. Data curation combines multiple processing steps: from data cataloguing to data quality control, data cleansing, definition of a data model, design and implementation of ETLs (Extract – Transformation – Load) as well as data storage. ITTM supports the design and implementation of secure knowledge platforms with a strong focus on data interoperability, re-usage and analysis. We also offer data science services from the collection of data, in-depth data analysis to data visualization.
ITTM is a member of the i2b2 tranSMART Foundation, a global non-profit organization that connects translational biomedical research through two open-source platforms. Our company is also one of the first EHDEN (European Health Data Evidence Network) certified SMEs. The EHDEN aims to promote the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) from Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI).
We actively participate in various IMI projects such as BIOMAP, ImSAVAR, ImmUniverse, OPTIMA, T2EVOLVE and TransBioLine. The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is a partnership between the European Union and the European pharmaceutical industry. It aims to provide Europeans with more efficient and effective medicines and treatments.
And what about your digital health services?
Due to our focus on data quality, contextualization and standardization in combination with proven and secure IT infrastructure in Luxembourg, we have strategic activities in digital health and mobile health. We are part of two prestigious European projects: Smart4Health and ICU4COVID. Smart4Health aims to provide European citizens with an interoperable infrastructure to manage their health information, including wellbeing and fitness. ICU4COVID seeks to deploy the Cyber-Physical System for Telemedicine and Intensive Care (CPS4TIC) to a large scale with full involvement of the end users, hospitals, and health authorities. We have also developed a secure and scalable health data as a service platform (Com4Care) that enables sharing all patient-related results between healthcare professionals.
In the future, we will get more involved in this market in combination with AI machine learning.
Why did you choose EBRC to integrate cyber-reliance in your business model?
First of all, ITTM and EBRC share the same culture and corporate values. Health-related data are very sensitive and need highly secure, reliable and flexible infrastructure solutions. Having a cybersecurity partner as EBRC was for us a logical choice. As being the holder of the HDS (Health Data Hosting), ISO 27001 (information security management) and ISO 22301 (business continuity management) certifications, EBRC meets perfectly the health sector requirements. In addition, the company offers the most secure data centres in Europe (Tier IV) and resilient cloud infrastructure, both available 24/7.
In December 2021, we went one step further in our partnership with EBRC by joining forces in cloud operations. Working with EBRC is very positive because it is a real partnership where both sides value and respect each other. In a way, EBRC has become the second pillar of our business model.
The human aspect seems very important to you…
Yes, indeed. That is why I am proud that our team is diversified in nationality, culture, gender and profession. It includes bioinformaticians, data scientists, software engineers and project managers. The training background of our colleagues is diverse as well. Not all are coming from the biological world, but also from chemistry, physics, medicine or IT. This diversity, this right mix of team members, is one of our main added values. We learn every day from each other and this allows us to extend our expertise and skills to a broad range of areas. Our team is relatively small – we are ten – at the moment, but we are growing fast and hiring. I am confident that the vacant positions will be fulfilled quickly. We have an excellent international customer and partner network and attractive projects! So far, we have successfully acquired 17 B2B customers with over 36 projects and 8 grants.
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1 According to a recent ranking based on net EC contribution (GRANTS, 2020).