Sensyne Health, the British Clinical AI technology company, has announced a three-year collaboration with the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute (BDI) to establish a world-leading research alliance to develop and evaluate the use of clinical artificial intelligence (clinical AI) and digital technology to understand the complexities of chronic disease.
Initially the collaboration will focus on chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease, diseases with significant and growing burdens on society with the potential for the discovery and development of new medicines and improved pathways of patient care within the NHS. The programme may extend into other chronic diseases in the future.
The three-year research programme will draw on BDI’s expertise in population health, clinical informatics and machine learning and will be facilitated by access to anonymised longitudinal datasets for those patients in the NHS Trusts which builds on Sensyne Health’s existing capabilities through its Clinical AI and Strategic Research Agreements, as well as the data generated by Sensyne’s digital health applications for the management of chronic disease. It will also draw on the expertise of researchers in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford in developing technology for collecting clinical-grade healthcare data at scale.
The research will focus on two major elements to derive new datasets that capture vital information from patient-clinician consultations during long-term management of chronic disease. This work will facilitate the use of clinical AI to understand the complexities of chronic disease and hence derive insights to accelerate drug discovery and development and improve pathways of patient care.
- Automated, real-time translation of physician notes into a longitudinal, semantic structure suitable for analysis by clinical AI.
- Remote patient monitoring using digital health tools and wearables to assess disease progression and inform clinical care.
In addition, the alliance will explore the clinical associations and consequences of diurnal changes in blood pressure, extending Sensyne’s in-house project, SH-001, which identified nocturnal surges in blood pressure in a sub-set of hospital inpatients.
Alongside this, the alliance will foster the development of an effective R&D and commercialisation pathway between the two organisations and a growing network of collaborating NHS Trusts. Under Sensyne’s unique business model the commercial value created from the research will be shared with the participating NHS Trusts and the University of Oxford via a shared equity ownership in Sensyne Health and a shared royalty on revenues.
Research will be undertaken to the highest standards of information governance and data security in accordance with NHS principles and data protection legislation.
Lord (Paul) Drayson, CEO of Sensyne Health, said, “This new collaboration with the BDI is designed to apply world-class data science to the growing burden of chronic disease on society, and create an effective partnership between the NHS, industry and academia that delivers scalable improvements to patient care, accelerates the discovery and development of new medicines and shares the commercial value created with our partner NHS Trusts and the University of Oxford.”
Professor Martin Landray, Deputy Director of the Big Data Institute and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology,commented, “This new collaboration sets out to improve our understanding of common chronic diseases, identify opportunities for better treatment, and enhance the quality and efficiency of clinical care. This work will provide benefits for individual patients, the NHS, and population health.”
