The Barts Health Data Platform will bring together different types of health information – such as scans, health records, and lab results – into one secure system that researchers can apply to use.
On Thursday 24 April, we celebrated the launch of the Barts Health Data Platform.
The Barts Health Data Platform will bring together different types of health information – such as scans, health records, and lab results – into one secure system that researchers can apply to use.
By doing this, the platform will help researchers explore health conditions in greater depth, study how treatments affect different patients, and potentially identify ways to improve care in the future.
We have supported the development of this platform with over £5m funding. It helps us to enable life-changing improvements to health for the people of East London by:
Professor Jianhua Wu, who is Professor of Biostatistics and Health Data Science at Queen Mary University of London, has been using the platform. He is looking at data of patients who come to the dental hospital and is trying to see how dental treatment can reduce the risk of those patients going on to develop conditions such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
"I think the platform is brilliant and has enabled us to do a lot of things that we can't normally do. By connecting a patient's dental data with their Barts Health medical record, we can start to identify and understand the link between dental issues and other health issues, such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes. We can then reach out to people at risk, through their community. Without Barts Charity's support, we wouldn't be able to do this."Professor Jianhua Wu
Fiona Miller Smith, Chief Executive of Barts Charity, spoke at the launch event.
“I’d like to commend those that had the vision to bring this programme together. While the power of health data has become increasingly clear to us over the last few years, this programme had its roots all the way back in 2018, at a time when only a few hospitals around the country were thinking about utilising their rich data sets in such an ambitious way. It was clear from those early discussions with Barts Charity that both the hospital and university recognised the direction of travel in this field and that Barts Health wished to be one of the front runners in the development of this exciting field.”Fiona Miller Smith
For Barts Charity, the Barts Health Data Platform covers key tenets of our funding principles for programmes at this scale:
“We would like to thank our colleagues at Barts Health and Queen Mary for their delivery in the development of the platform. As a funder we understand programmes of this scale can be technically challenging and complex but through your collective leadership, collaborative style and expertise you have developed an infrastructure and resource that has the potential to improve outcomes for patients across East London.”Fiona Miller Smith
“We are now able to provide researchers and clinicians with access to health and imaging data at a scale we’ve not offered before. With robust safeguards in place, this development supports more efficient, secure research and marks meaningful progress in advancing medical innovation and understanding of disease.”Steven Newhouse, Deputy Chief Information Officer of Precision Medicine
With our funding, a team at Barts Health NHS Trust will digitise records for patients in intensive care and operating theatres. This data will provide information in almost real time that will alert teams to any life-changing deterioration in health, and free up nurses’ time to invest in critical patient care.
Ashwin Kalra is currently in his third and final year of a Barts Charity Healthcare Professional Clinical Research Training Fellowship. He is developing an online platform which will help patients make an informed decision about genetic testing, in the comfort of their own home.
The Precision Medicine Platform will bring patient data from across Barts Health NHS Trust, into one accessible resource to improve research and allow doctors to identify treatments according to individual circumstances.
