Leicester part of partnership bringing world-class expertise to benefit patients and populations
Health Data Research UK is awarding £30 million funding to six sites across the UK - including our University - to address challenging healthcare issues through use of data science.
Each site has world-class expertise; a track record in using health data to derive new knowledge, scientific discovery and insight; and works in close partnership with NHS bodies and the public to translate research findings into benefits for patients and populations.
From April this year, the six sites will work collaboratively as foundation partners in Health Data Research UK to make game-changing improvements in people’s health by harnessing data science at scale across the UK.
Each site’s research organisations will receive long-term funding awards and will become part of a collaborative research community working together to deliver the priorities of Health Data Research UK. This initial funding is awarded following a rigorous application process, which included interviews with an international panel of experts.
Professor Anthony Brookes, Professor of Bioinformatics and Genomics at Leicester, and Lead for the multi-disciplinary 'BINERI' network that strategically unifies all the University's biomedical data science activities, said: “The UK has been evolving its biomedical informatics strategy for a number of years, culminating today in this new and powerfully cohesive national strategy that will appropriately exploit large-scale digital information to bridge the research and healthcare sectors. Most fundamentally it brings experts together across the geographic and disciplinary divides, with the value of this already apparent across the Midland's partners as we make consented healthcare and research data more findable, accessible, useful and utilised.
Professor Keith Abrams, Professor of Medical Statistics & NIHR Senior Investigator Emeritus, and Head of the Biostatistics Research Group at our University, said: “This award demonstrates not only the strength of methods research for health data science in the Midlands, but also our track record and commitment to both the development of future leaders in health data science, and collaboration between Universities, NHS and industry.”
- For further details, please visit the Health Data Research UK website
- Press release and details of the Health Data Research UK sites