Convert research into business
If you want to start a company using data from a source you do not own, and via ideas you developed as part of your research, you have to contact your university’s legal department.
You are not the only stakeholder here. In addition to the hospital (obviously) who may have a claim to ownership we have
- Your university
- Your PI
- Your funding agency
- Other collaborators
In addition, medical data is highly sensitive usually and at least in my university more care is needed. Did you obtain IRB approval for example? To illustrate: hospitals have to obtain consent from patients in order to release their data to third parties. If the consent was for research purposes only then you can’t commercialize it.
Good luck!
I have to assume in the following that none of your plans require you to make any of the data you received public in any way. That all you will do with it is to train the AI.
But there are still a few questions.
Was the data released to you or to the university for which you work/study? If to you, the university isn't a party, otherwise it is. But the hospital is, in any case.
The data was released to you for a purpose and you are going beyond that purpose. This may be allowed or not, but given the assumption above, it would probably be allowed. But you have to ask: the hospital and/or the university. Don't assume that it is allowed.
I think that the fact that this will be a commercial product has little relevance here ethically. But other stakeholders in the data may want a share. I suspect that giving them a perpetual free license to use any future product would be enough, but that is up to them to say.
You would also be wise to use more than one dataset for training.
Make sure that you are aware of the conditions under which you were given the data. There should be some document surely somewhere were this information can be found. Otherwise you can contact the institution that provided them to you and ask them.
I shouldn't say that it is impossible for you to do this, but you need to tread very carefully. Information you and i may not judge as patient information may infact be and such. Delicate matters.
Good luck!