UK to establish 'Digital Innovation Hubs' to tackle health challenges

Digital Innovations Hubs are to be created in the UK to help connect data and fast-track treatments for a range of important diseases like cancer, heart disease and asthma.

The Hubs’ development is being funded with £37.5 million via the Industrial Strategy Challenge fund, with the project being led by Health Data Research UK (HDR UK).

The project hopes to help connect healthcare data with biomedical data to enable NHS, academic researchers and industry to utilise scientific information and emerging technologies to develop new drugs and devices.

Over the next three years between three and five hubs will be created to securely connect data and improve the health on the public. Data from GP practices, hospitals, social and community care providers, as well as research environments, will be connected across regions of three to five million.

In particular, the hubs hope to tackle some of the UK’s most important health questions, such as links between air pollution on developing lung cancer and heart disease; discovering new genetic causes of diseases to allow for tailored treatments; and to reduce life-threatening complications of diabetes.

The Digital Innovation Hubs come as part of the second wave of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund which is focusing on early diagnosis and precision medicine.

The programme will launch this Autumn and will compliment other projects such as the NHS’ Local Health and Care Record Exemplar programme.

Speaking about the initiative, health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock said: “Over its 70 years the NHS has been the forefront of innovation, including the discovery of DNA and the adoption of CT scanners. These hubs will allow researchers to unlock new advances by harnessing the huge potential of data so the NHS will continue to lead the way in technology that improves patient care, makes taxpayers’ money go further and lessens the workload for staff.”

Professor Andrew Morris, director of Health Data Research UK, said: “Our approach at Health Data Research UK is built on the principles of ethical and trustworthy use of data that is in the interest of the society we serve. Our existing HDR UK centres of research excellence, constituting 22 Universities and NHS partners across the UK have an outstanding track record of using health data safely and securely to derive new knowledge, scientific discovery and insight. We know from international research that the best performing health systems in terms of patient safety and quality of care are research and data enabled. We expect the creation of Digital Innovation Hubs will help deliver direct benefits to the NHS and the 65 million citizens of the UK.”