Newcastle Hospitals to create data platform for medical research

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has selected two firms to help transform its dataset to improve medical research and innovation.

The trust’s dataset, which covers patient care, treatment outcomes and service delivery, is currently stored across multiple systems, presenting a challenge when using it for research and development.

Promptly Health and Flatiron will work to create a dedicated data platform to support clinicians, researchers and service leaders to better understand data, identify trends, and generate actionable insights to improve patient outcomes and service delivery.

Vicky McFarlane-Reid, director for commercial development and innovation for Newcastle Hospitals, said: “Through our data partnerships, we’ll be able to refine how and when we provide certain types of care, help industry to develop new drugs and medicines and ultimately improve health through combining the expertise and skills of doctors and nurses with better statistical information and insight.”

The project aims to use the improved data access to accelerate research and support therapeutic innovation within the trust through the creation of anonymised datasets, which have all patient-identifiable information removed.

Data will be used under strict controls and approval processes, with patients able to opt out of sharing their data if they wish.

Newcastle Hospitals has confirmed that access to the data for commercial researchers – such as pharmaceutical companies – will be charged, with the income generated being invested back into NHS care.

Pedro Ramos, chief executive at Promptly Health said: “The hospitals lead some of the UK’s most pioneering medical research in the areas of kidney research, mitochondrial and neuromuscular disorders.

“We see this partnership as a responsibility to support this extraordinary infrastructure with technology that can deliver accessible, secure, high-quality data.

“Together, I am confident we will be able to accelerate discovery, enable more collaborative research, and ultimately drive faster, life-changing innovations for the benefit of patients and their families.”

The project has been approved by the NHS Health Research Authority.

Promptly Health was previously selected as technological partner by NHS Wales, for its initiative tasked with collecting and harmonising patient-centred outcomes data.