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Nottingham joins UK data alliance for research
NUH is one of eight leading health organisations, research institutes and charities, that today are joining the UK Health Data Research Alliance.
Established in February 2019, by Health Data Research UK with 10 founding members, the Alliance will help researchers to answer some of the most difficult questions and address the most important health challenges faced in the UK through better access to health data.
Representing the first NHS trusts and medical research charities to join the Alliance, these new members offer an exceptional opportunity to provide access to rich and diverse health data for research and innovation.
Research based on data that reflects diversity of culture, healthcare conditions and aspects such as race, ethnicity, gender and age improves the ability to generalise results and enables new discoveries and understanding about disease. In turn this provides fairer and more equal access to the latest treatments and medical technologies, benefiting as many people across the UK as possible.
The UK Health Data Research Alliance develops and co-ordinates the adoption of tools, techniques, conventions, technologies, and designs that enable the use of health data in a trustworthy and ethical way for research and innovation. Its members formulate best practice and standards in areas such as privacy, transparency, public engagement, inclusivity and governance to ensure that health data is shared and used responsibly by researchers and innovators. Any requests to access data held by Alliance members for research and innovation will continue to go through their existing protocols to ensure strict security and data privacy.
Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK and Chair of the Alliance Board, said: “We warmly welcome these new members to join the UK Health Data Research Alliance. Each brings high value datasets as well as new approaches to developing tools and techniques to use diverse health data at scale to make improvements to people’s lives through research.”
Professor Ian Hall, Director of the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre based at Nottingham University Hospitals said: “I am delighted that Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which hosts the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, has agreed to join this initiative. The UK has some of the best datasets in the world which can be used to improve clinical care for patients and to facilitate development of new treatments. Being involved with the research alliance should improve our ability to use these data assets, and will bring benefits both to our patients and to our research team.”
Other new members of the Alliance are UK Biobank, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, The Brain Tumour Charity, NIHR BioResource, and Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP).