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Gerry Reilly, Chief Technology Officer, Health Data Research UK

 

We had an excellent turnout for our 2nd Digital Innovation Hub Programme Frontiers Meeting for Industry today, held in the wonderful setting of the Dorchester Room at The Royal College of Physicians.

The attendees represented a wider spread of ‘data users’ from across the broad UK Life Sciences Industry, and this provided for a stimulating and insightful morning of discussion.

The event was opened by Lord James O’Shaughnessy, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health, outlining the health data opportunity, the need for partnership across all sectors and the critical need for public trust.  The importance of this opportunity was underlined by Lord O’Shaughnessy remaining at the event for the next two hours of the discussions.

Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK then introduced the Digital Innovation Hub Programme and the need for dialogue and co-development to ensure we collaborate to evolve a UK-scale capability for innovation and research that meets the needs of a diverse set of users. This was followed by some excellent case studies from Martin Gibson, CEO North West eHealth; Anne Bruinvels, Founder Px HealthCare and David Adkins, CEO Congenica followed a lively panel session – under the excellent guidance of Sarah Haywood, CEO MedCity.

This set the scene for a great working session with roundtable discussions across three key elements of the programme:

  1. What do industry researchers and innovators need from a UK-wide infrastructure?
  2. What should the operating and commercial models prioritise?
  3. How do we ensure the benefits are shared to deliver value to society?

The discussions on the tables were lively and surfaced many excellent ideas around commercial models, the need to modernise approaches to data access, the international challenges, IP requirements and much more.  No doubt, many follow-up discussions will also take place given the great amount of interaction.

Many thanks to all those who attended today, to my HDR UK colleagues and those from our partners (Office for Life Sciences, Medicines Discover Catapult, UK Bioindustry Association, ABPI and MedCity) for making the event such a success.  We’ll be sharing the outputs from the event shortly.