A major digital health initiative has been launched that will see University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS FT work in partnership with University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS FT, using data collected in acute care settings to improve patient care.
Through the work UCLH will become a key partner in PIONEER, a Health Data Research UK programme led by UHB, which collects and curates data from primary care, secondary care, social care, and ambulance trusts.
The addition of UCLH to PIONEER will allow the partnership to scale its patient dataset that are used to support research and assist healthcare organisations to develop, test and deliver advances in acute clinical care. It also provides ‘real-time data for capacity planning and service innovation’, ‘supports learning healthcare systems’ and helps ‘map innovation need’.
Planned projects for the programme include research into data on the microbial causes of infection and of antibiotic use, and developing new tools to identify those most at risk of deteriorating health using health data from the earliest stages of unplanned or emergency admissions across the trusts.
Professor Bryan Williams, UCLH Director of Research, said: “This partnership with our colleagues in Birmingham will transform our ability to gain rapid and novel insights, to further improve care and patient outcomes in acute medical settings across the NHS.
“This is a fantastic example of how two digitally mature NHS trusts can work together to drive improvements in care we provide to our patients,” commented Professor Simon Ball, Chief Medical Officer at UHB. “With a greater and wider dataset, models, trends and advances can be sped up. This expanded partnership with UCLH will allow us to do just that at a time where the health service needs this most.”
PIONEER is one of a network of Hubs using expertise, tools and knowledge to maximise innovations developed from health data and is funded by the Medical Research Committee (MRC).
