Health Data Research (HDR) UK has recently announced a £2.5m investment as part of its strategic mission to unite the UK’s health data.
The fund will support 12 collaborative projects across the UK. These projects will include capacity building efforts to train future health data scientists, developing and harmonising open data resources, and building on the knowledge gained from the COVID-19 response to prepare for future population-scale health crises.
Population Data Science at Swansea University will form an integral part of three of these funded projects. The HDR UK centre at Population Data Science Swansea works to modernise public health and accelerate the impact of health data science. Established in 2018, the centre works cohesively with others in Population Data Science, such as SAIL Databank and the Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP), to leverage the data science expertise and Trusted Research Environment (TRE) infrastructure to achieve HDR UK’s strategic goals.
The three projects recently announced are;
Speaking following the announcement, Co-director of Population Data Science and Research Director of HDR UK (Wales & Northern Ireland), Professor Ronan Lyons, said, “It’s testament to the powerful infrastructure and expertise within Population Data Science that we continue to attract high-level investment to help drive national health data strategies. Our informatics competencies have developed and matured over time. We’re confident that by tapping into this, our HDR UK centre of excellence can fully support the strategic transition and delivery of HDR UK’s goals over the next five years’.
HDR UK Senior Research Manager & Data Scientist, Ashley Akbari, added, “Since the inception of our centre, we have always driven Team Science and collaboration through multi-disciplinary and multi-organisation working. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been even more important to strive for this collaborative research methods, working in a dynamic, agile and reproducible approach in readiness for any future threats to public health. We hope to continue to collaborate in important projects and developments such as these, which enable the data linkage knowledge and experience available at Population Data Science Swansea to support the next phase in HDR UK’s long-term strategy to improve lives through ever more effective use of health data.”