Cardiff University has launched a new website designed to make disease prevalence data in the UK accessible by search, underpinned by an analytical platform called Livingstone which enables routine healthcare data to be analysed “in near real-time”.
The platform, entitled Prevalence UK, can process health data “in minutes” according to the university, whereas “a scientific study using complex data from the NHS can take 12 to 18 months”.
Professor Craig Currie from Cardiff University said: “By offering instant access to vital epidemiological analysis, Livingstone and Prevalence UK are helping us to achieve our objectives of improving healthcare outcomes here in the UK and elsewhere. These epidemiological studies normally take one to two years, at considerable financial cost, and only with a large team of experts. Livingstone can do the same, and better, in minutes.”
He noted that the platform features a “user-friendly interface that allows users to filter prevalence data by disease” and added that “this information can assist in the creation of targeted and effective health policies, development of medical research priorities and help with the allocation of scarce healthcare resources.”
Dr John Peters, former medical director for Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, labelled the platform as a “turning point for global health information analysis”. He said that understanding the epidemiology of diseases and being able to produce “instant, scientific, valid health intelligence”, makes it “feasible to develop more effective treatment strategies, public health initiatives, and preventive measures.”.
Elsewhere in health data, £72.3 million in funding has been announced for HDR UK to launch five new health data research programmes. The programmes aim to “harness the power of large-scale data to tackle some of the largest health challenges and build a strong foundation for future research”.
Also in health data, NHS England recently published a blog post from Ming Tang, chief data and analytics officer at NHS England, to highlight it expects to announce the successful supplier for its procurement of software to connect data across the NHS in a “federated data platform” in autumn.
To visit the new platform, please click here.
