Three new members have joined the UK Health Data Research Alliance, a consortium of leading health data custodians and research organisations, working to accelerate the use of health data to improve health and care across the country. Thirty-three organisations in total have now joined the Alliance in the 18 months since its launch in early 2019, collaborating to promote the responsible use of health data for research and innovation to improves patients’ lives. 

The NIHR Clinical Research Network (NIHR CRN), supports patients, the public and health and care organisations across England to participate in high-quality research, advancing knowledge and improving care. The CRN is comprised of 15 Local Clinical Research Networks and 30 specialties, who coordinate and support the delivery of high-quality research both by geography and therapy area, bringing a wealth of expertise and a wide variety of data to the Alliance. NIHR is the country’s largest funder of health and care research, providing the people, facilities and technology that enables research to thrive. 

Also joining the Alliance is the National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging (NCIMI), part of the University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division. NCIMI works to bring together world-leading clinicians, NHS hospitals, industry experts in clinical imaging and artificial intelligence, charities, and patient groups in order to transform how we diagnose and treat diseases and chronic health conditions. Their goal is to build a pipeline for innovation to allow new medical imaging AI tools to be developed, tested, validated and adopted by the NHS. The NCIMI is also one of the five centres of excellence in medical imaging and digital pathology funded through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the government’s flagship investment programme that focusses on addressing opportunities and challenges of the future. 

Generation Scotland, the third newcomer, brings a resource of human biological samples and data which is available to scientists for medical research. Generation Scotland aims to create more effective treatments based on gene knowledge for the medical, social and economic benefit of Scotland and its people. It operates through a unique partnership with the Scottish University Medical Schools, the NHS and the people of Scotland.  

Welcoming the newest Alliance members, David Seymour, Partnership Director at Health Data Research UK, said: “The Alliance is all about collaboration, sharing knowledge and uniting data to help researchers make new breakthroughs that to improve health and care across the UK. Every new member brings expertise, diversity and insight to the Alliance through both their important datasets and their contribution to our work programme.  We welcome our new colleagues in NIHR CRN, NCIMI and Generation Scotland.” 

ENDS 

Contact: Francesca Lord, Health Data Research UK  

Notes to editors: 

The UK Health Data Research Alliance is not a data controller. It is an independent Alliance of health data custodians and acts as an unincorporated, not-for-profit and cost neutral association.

The Alliance encourages widespread access and use of health data to advance human health by: 

  1. Being patient and public centred: building trust by supporting and promoting the responsible sharing of health data, respecting data sharing and privacy preferences of participants, and using best practices in public outreach, security, ethics, and regulation.
  2. Working together as one to provide researchers and innovators with services and value that no organisation can deliver on its own.
  3.  Offering a world-leading range of health data science tools, processes and solutions to security, ethics and privacy.
  4. Being committed to innovation to improve customer service and responding to the needs of health data users who are doing the science and innovations: making data faster and less expensive to find and access by harmonising, simplifying and making transparent policies, standards and codes of conduct for the storage, analysis and responsible access of data.
  5. Establishing technology and ways of working to increase use of and insights from data: building trust and effective ways of working among stakeholders, making datasets available to use on a versatile, secure information platform, making tools and models available, adopting best practices in governance and commercial models to develop an ecosystem that accelerates progress.

UK health organisations are encouraged to contact Health Data Research UK to discuss joining the Alliance. For further information visit www.ukhealthdata.org