Building on GOSH’s position as a leader in digital innovation in the NHS, the collaboration uses cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, to enable better use of data that is routinely collected to improve care at GOSH and beyond. While no patient data is shared, these new tools will allow data to be harnessed in secure and novel ways, improving clinical care and patient experience. This will optimise the development of innovative new treatments for rare and complex diseases, helping to get them from the lab to the patient more quickly.
This first-of-a-kind collaboration aims to develop a better understanding of how the NHS and pharmaceutical companies can work together to improve the lives of patients. By enabling the automated analysis of anonymised information – such as genomic data, images and text – tools and clinical workflows can be developed to enhance clinical decision-making at scale across the NHS, with the ultimate goal of ensuring patients get the best possible care at each step of their journey, built on learnings from every patient that has been treated before.
Alexandra Holland, member of GOSH’s Young Persons Advisory Group on research, said: “With new diseases constantly evolving and gold standards for treatments changing, innovation is a process of continually driving forward to keep up. It’s important for the NHS and industry to co-develop solutions so that data can most effectively improve hospitals and patient care.”
Professor Neil Sebire, Chief Research Information Officer at GOSH DRIVE, said: “We are one of the most digitally advanced hospitals in Europe and have over 170 years of experience caring for children and young people with complex health conditions. This means we have a huge amount of experience and information that can help us to find new and better ways to diagnose and treat patients and run our hospital. But we need new tools to harness the power of this data. Our partnership with Roche UK will help us do this by enhancing our data capabilities and infrastructure.”
Roche UK will provide funding and second staff to work closely with GOSH’s Data Research, Innovation and Virtual Environments Unit (GOSH DRIVE). Directed by a steering group of leaders from both organisations, the team will work with other partners such as the public, patients, UK Government bodies and healthcare partners, adopting a system change approach that can create benefit across the NHS. All projects undertaken within the partnership are conducted within GOSH’s secure digital research infrastructure and no patient data is shared between the organisations or outside of GOSH. All intellectual property will be owned by GOSH and the projects’ methodology and findings will be shared openly according to best practice to accelerate learnings across the NHS. In addition, findings and expertise will be shared through open publications and discussions with NHS partners. We believe this approach will help break down existing barriers to the rapid uptake of new technology across the NHS.
Richard Erwin, General Manager at Roche UK, said: “Like GOSH, we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure patients have the best possible experience and outcomes. Through our collaboration, we can show how the NHS and pharma can work together to develop technologies that optimise the use of data already collected within the NHS to deploy real world applications that deliver benefit to patients and health systems.”
For more information, please visit www.roche.co.uk.
