Source: pharmafield.co.uk
There is a £2 million opportunity for new health data science partnership and projects to improve patient care as organisations across the UK are invited to contribute to a national programme that aims to enable better patient care through responsible use of health data used in health and care decisions.
Health Data Research UK – the national institute for health data science – is launching the opportunity that aims to help patients across the UK to benefit from health and care decisions that are informed by analysing large scale data. This work includes up to four projects and a brand-new partnership that will integrate with Health Data Research UK’s existing research activities.
Health Data Research UK is seeking a Better Care Partnership to lead a new data science initiative, which could receive up to £1.2 million. Initially funded for a period of three years, the Better Care Partnership will use continuous improvement methods to integrate clinical practice, large scale health data and advanced analytics to deliver insights for improving care for patients across the UK.
In addition, Health Data Research UK will also be supporting one year Catalyst Projects to demonstrate examples of how patient care can be improved through data-driven health and care decisions. Health Data Research UK is teaming up with the Health Foundation to jointly support these 12-month projects, which could each receive up to £200,000.
Organisations putting forward new partnership and project opportunities will be expected to demonstrate how they plan to listen to patients and understand their wishes about how their health data will be used. They will also be expected to show how patients will be involved at all stages of the project or partnership. The aim is to use health data responsibly and ethically with a clear focus on improving patient care.
Professor Simon Ball, Medical Director at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, and National Lead for Health Data Research UK’s Better Care priority, said: “As healthcare professionals we make hundreds of decisions a week with our patients. In doing so we aim to decide what will work best for each individual. Electronic healthcare records offer the opportunity to combine patients’ data with information on best practice, so that we can reliably deliver high quality care in complex settings and pressured environments. Beyond that we can use the resulting data on patients’ outcomes and experience, to continuously learn from, and improve on, everyday practice in ways that are applicable across the NHS.”
Every day doctors, nurses and patients in GP practices and hospitals across the UK are making countless decisions that impact on people’s health and care. These decisions are primarily based on the knowledge of the individual clinician and patient, relevant medical research and the data they can access. The UK has vast and rich data about people’s health and care, however this is often not available quickly for clinicians or patients to access to support their decision making. This causes delays and, in some cases, prevents the data from being analysed to deliver better care and improve people’s health. Both the Catalyst Projects and the Better Care Partnership, which will start in May 2020, aim to help address some of these issues.
The closing date for applying for the Catalyst and Better Care Partnership is 11 Mar 2020 at 4pm.
The Health Data Research UK’s website has more information about the Better Care Programme and details of this opportunity.