The four eHealth Centres of Excellence will be based in London, Manchester, Dundee and Swansea, and should be up and running by the end of the year.
The Medical Research Council, which is leading the consortium, said the Centres would: “Harness the wealth of UK electronic health records to improve patient care and public health”.
This comes after the UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that he was looking to amend the NHS Constitution to allow all NHS patients’ records to be used for research purposes, unless a patient opts out.
The government hopes that allowing pharma and academia access to this real world data - via the new Centres - will help speed up the R&D process, whilst also making the UK more attractive to life science firms.
The four Centres will investigate a wide range of conditions, including diabetes and obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer and child and maternal health.
The patient data sets will be available through a ‘Clinical Practice Research Datalink’ - a £60 million service recently announced by the MHRA and the National Institute for Health Research.
A network will also be formed to capitalise on the expertise in the Centres, and to encourage wider collaborations amongst UK and international researchers.
The Centres will also offer career development and training opportunities to increase the UK’s capacity and capability in research using health records, the MRC said.
Minister for universities and science David Willetts, who announced the funding, said: “Thanks to the NHS and the UK’s world-leading research base, we are uniquely positioned to use patient data to study disease and develop better treatments.
“The eHealth centres are the first of their kind and have the potential to revolutionise health research. They will provide a vital insight into conditions affecting millions of people and ultimately bring benefits for patients.”
Professor Sir John Savill, chief executive of the MRC, said that this was a ‘watershed moment’ for data research.
“The way in which the partner organisations have come together to invest in eHealth underpins its importance and will help establish the UK as a world leader in this field,” he added.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Ben Adams
Quelle/Source: InPharm, 09.08.2012
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