Data for health

Getting patient data into good shape, making health data work harder

One of the key Imperial College AHSC objectives is to harness the power of the vast amount of data that is routinely generated in healthcare in the UK and to put that to work for patients.

Clues to better health lie in all the information we are already capturing.

The digital technology and engineering know-how to unlock new understanding and insights is a crucial AHSC advantage, as is the range of exemplar programmes it is already involved in:

• Imperial Data Science Institute
• NIHR Health Informatics Collaborative
• NHS Digital Academy
• NHS England Global Digital Exemplar

The AHSC’s priority programme in Data for health is overseen by the AHSC Research Informatics Committee and the workplan includes:

• Developing infrastructure to automate data capture from structured and unstructured electronically held data sets at each partner institution
• Enable the pooling of high quality, curated NHS patient-level data from across the partners and with other organisations for research, initially in lung and colorectal cancer, critical care and cardiovascular disease
• Accessing information from primary care
• Creating a secure environment for the storage and processing of patient data conforming to the highest information security standards and at the leading edge of best practice in data governance
• Utilising the high-end computing and informatics capability at Imperial College London for analysis as well as the ability to link and utilise external research data sets
• Implement hospital-wide research consent for patients linked to their clinical information, to assist recruitment to clinical trials, precision medicine studies and increase the number of patients involved in clinical research.
• Developing skills and capacity in informatics for healthcare staff