Clinical AI provider, Sensyne Health has signed its first Strategic Research Agreement in the U.S. with St. Luke’s University Health Network, a leading U.S. health system serving patients in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The agreement will enable the ethical application of clinical AI research to improve patient care and accelerate medical research.
This agreement represents an important first step in Sensyne’s mission of building an international resource for medical research using real world evidence. The St. Luke’s dataset covers 2.5 million de-identifed unique patients, from a patient population of approximately one million people across 12 hospitals and over 300 outpatient locations.
Consistent with Sensyne’s approach with all its relationships with health systems, this research will be undertaken to the highest standards of information governance and data security and in accordance with The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the U.S. data protection legislation that protects sensitive patient information. All data supplied to Sensyne for research will be de-identified by St. Luke’s beforehand, will remain in the U.S., and the provision of the data will operate under an agreed set of data processing procedures.
“We are proud of the results we have achieved to-date in partnership with the U.K.’s National Health Service and we are excited to apply our pioneering partnership model in the United States with a respected leader like St. Luke’s. Healthcare data saves lives, and our aim is to build the world’s best resource for the ethical use of anonymised and de-identified patient data for medical research. This new partnership represents an important step towards that goal.” Comments Lord (Paul) Drayson, PhD, CEO of Sensyne Health.
Founded in 1872, St Luke’s University Health Network is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 16,000 employees providing services at 12 hospital sites and 300 outpatient sites. Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, St. Luke’s established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only regional medical school campus. St. Luke’s flagship University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from IBM Watson Health nine times and seven years in a row, including in 2021 when it was identified as the number one ‘Teaching Hospital in the Country’.
St. Luke’s joins 11 National Health Service (NHS) Trusts in the U.K., covering more than 13% of the U.K. population, which have partnered with Sensyne sharing anonymised clinical datasets to enable the discovery of new treatments, increase disease understanding, and advance clinical trial design.
Under the terms of the agreement, St. Luke’s will receive shares in Sensyne Health plc as well as a royalty on revenues that are generated by Sensyne from the research undertaken under this agreement.
Chad Brisendine, VP and Chief Information Officer of St. Luke’s said: “At St. Luke’s, we are committed to caring not just for the health and physical safety of our patients, but also for the safety and privacy of their information. In an information and data-driven world, we are always looking for ways to lead our industry towards more effective and nuanced approaches to data protection and privacy for patients. Sensyne’s ethical model represents the kind of approach we need to embrace to advance our clinical and financial goals while meeting our patients’ expectations of us as trusted stewards of their healthcare information.”