Royal Devon and Exeter signs five-year research deal with Sensyne Health

The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust has signed a five-year non-exclusive strategic research agreement (SRA) with Sensyne Health.

The agreement will enable the ethical application of clinical AI research to improve patient care and accelerate research into new medicines. The trust’s dataset covers 1.2 million unique patient records and covers a population of about 450,000 people.

All data supplied to Sensyne will be anonymised by Royal Devon and Exeter beforehand and the provision of the data will operate under an agreed data processing protocol which will be overseen by the trust.

In addition, Royal Devon and Exeter will receive just over 1.5million shares in Sensyne Health which brings the total share ownership held by NHS Trusts in Sensyne to 13.3%. This is after The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust signed similar deals.

The trust will also receive up to £250,000 investment from Sensyne per year over the 5-year term of the contract. This will go towards specific investments in information technology to enable the ethical curation and analysis of anonymised data under the SRA.

Furthermore, the trust will receive a royalty on revenues that are generated by Sensyne from the research undertaken under the SRA. The financial return RD&E receives from Sensyne will be reinvested back into the NHS to enhance patient care.

This latest agreement for Sensyne brings the combined total of anonymised data available for analysis by Sensyne up from 6.8 million to 8.5 million patients.