The new project will have £22 million in funding available so that five centres across the U.K. can be established for health data innovation. The aim is to enable scientists to be able to access and analyze data drawn from U.K. health services.
The costs of the project are being met by the British government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, which is overseen by the U.K. Research and Innovation. The fund forms part of government’s Industrial Strategy, the long-term plan to raise productivity and earning power in the U.K.
The specific area of funding forms part of the Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine challenge, which is seeking innovations designed to provide early diagnosis for particular diseases and to develop new candidate treatments. From this funding packet, some £210 million is on offer to industry and researchers to improve how data is used to support earlier diagnosis and the development of precision medicine.
With the new hubs that will be overseen by the Medical Research Council, PharmaPhorum reports that the centers will be built to help researchers answer complex questions relating to health and disease, to explore novel treatments and accelerate personalised treatments.
It is hoped the data centers will be able to use health data to research the genetic, lifestyle and social factors behind many diseases and to help to identify revealing data trends. According to Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK: “The U.K. has a high energy community that brings together leading health experts, entrepreneurs and data scientists. When combined with the U.K.’s ability to bring data together from hospitals, patients, public health and laboratories, we can power an open innovation platform that improves the health and care of people living with cancer, diabetes and heart disease and make the UK the place for ethical data research.”
