Clinical AI company welcomes healthcare data report

Sensyne Health, a clinical AI technology company, has welcomed EY Global Services Limited’s report entitled Realising the Value of Healthcare Data. 

EY estimates that curated NHS data could generate as much as £5 billion per annum while delivering around £4.6 billion of benefit to patients. This is through operational savings for the NHS, enhanced patient outcomes, personalised medicine and wider benefits to the UK economy from ‘big data’ use.

The report provides a suggested framework for the NHS to harness patient data in an ethical manner, demonstrating its high value to the healthcare ecosystem.

Lord (Paul) Drayson, chief executive officer of Sensyne Health, said: “Data driven innovation will transform how healthcare is delivered in future. The quality and scale of NHS data, covering a population of over 50 million people from birth to death, provides the UK with a major competitive advantage and is a very valuable national asset. Enlightened policy that encourages ethical and fair collaborations between the NHS and the life sciences industry that use NHS data, could help to fund NHS services in future, as well as significantly improving the quality and affordability of care for patients.”

EY and Sensyne Health entered a Strategic Advisory Services agreement in November 2018 under which EY will provide ‘design and build’ specialist resources comprising strategy, analytics, cyber, valuation, risk and governance capabilities to Sensyne Health. Sensyne Health and its partners Bayer, Microsoft, JP Morgan and Peel Hunt are working together on the development of a national linked patient data capability and developing proposals to scale Sensyne Health’s current network of strategic research agreements with NHS Trusts.

Pamela Spence, partner and EY Global Health Sciences and Wellness leader, said: “Unlocking the power of health care data to fuel innovation in medical research and improve patient care is at the heart of today’s health care revolution.

“Firstly, it is critical that all analyses and innovations adhere with medical ethics and research regulations. Patients must be informed and need to be confident in how their data is being used, and that their privacy and rights are safeguarded – in fact, we have seen data specialists taking considerable measures to ensure their infrastructure meets the gold-standard as set by DHSC and are willing to adopt best practice principles to protect patient data. We believe that tapping into the potential of this huge anonymised data source for the advancement of healthcare, while creating a substantial income generator for an ever-stretched NHS, can be done ethically.

“Patient-level records will trace a complete story of a patient’s health, wellness, diagnosis, treatments, medical procedures and outcomes. This can only be delivered by unlocking the power of data. But value isn’t in the data itself – it’s in the power of the analytics and the clever insights that can be generated from algorithms, and the actions that can be taken as a result.

“In today’s digital ecosystem, successful organisations will be those that can partner and share value between them. Mutual value recognition is critical to this new emerging shared economy.”