The Wellcome Trust is to act as host to the planned Health Data Research Service, providing the data infrastructure based at its Wellcome Genome Campus.
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting announced the plan in Parliament, saying it will provide healthcare researchers with a secure single access point to data from the health service in England.
It will also help to hasten the set-up of clinical trials with the ultimate aim of improving patient care.
The move will involve an investment of £500 million by the UK Government with the Wellcome Trust committing an additional £100 million.
Improved access
“This will improve access to data for medical research by providing a secure single access point, meaning a researcher doesn’t have to navigate different systems or make multiple applications for information for the same project,” Streeting said.
“This will unlock the power of NHS data to transform research and lead to breakthroughs that improve care for patients.”
He added: “We will work closely with Wellcome and other stakeholders to ensure the successful implementation of a service that will drive faster research that benefits patients sooner.”
The Wellcome Trust will host the service at its Wellcome Genome Campus near Cambridge, which is home to organisations including Genomics England and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and is currently undergoing an expansion.
It said that researchers can already access a range of data sources including some NHS datasets, but not all at national or regional level and face obstacles in accessing and analysing them. These often derive from differences in how data is collected, sorted, linked and stored, and researchers may have to submit multiple applications to access different datasets.
Simpler analysis
CEO of Wellcome John-Arne Røttingen commented: “The simpler it is to analyse data or identify patients to join clinical trials, the more quickly we can improve our understanding of illness and develop new treatments.
“Providing a single, secure service for approved researchers will take away the significant overhead associated of locating, accessing and comparing disparate datasets. It will create opportunities for patients to access new treatments through trials that would otherwise have been hard to arrange or conduct.”
Creating the service was a recommendation of the Sudlow Review commissioned by the chief medical officer for England, the UK national statistician and NHS England’s national director for transformation.
