Introducing HDRUK’s Innovation Gateway - the next generation health data resource
Health and clinical data is a central part of understanding the reality of dealing with diseases. The need for it only increases while the access-related challenges make it complicated to acquire. Thankfully due to a recent effort by HDRUK, more and more datasets can be shared.
We are delighted to announce that BiŌkeanós now contains a new metasource: Health Data Research Innovation Gateway. It aims to make disjoint research institutions and NHS trusts' data available for research and innovation purposes. It contains hundreds of datasets related to health - from audits, system measurements, questionnaires, impact and disease assessments, clinical records, pathology, genetics to biobanks.
What is it?
It is a dynamic, quickly growing resource, backed by a large consortium and aimed at streamlining and unifying the access to the disjoint health data scattered across multiple institutions. It creates a blooming ecosystem of data, accessibility patterns and tools. Powered by a powerful API, it is a robust platform with a solid technological backbone, driving the future of medical data in the UK. Innovation Gateway covers an extensive range of diseases and subjects due to co-operation with specialised institutions sharing their collections. For example, BREATHE provides several datasets centred around respiratory disorders, from the standard of care of chronic pulmonary diseases, pneumonia prevention, infection and cancer detection to functional genetics of lungs. Similarly, INSIGHT specialising in eye health provides images from London's Moorfields Eye Hospital that shed light on conditions such as glaucoma or diabetic macular oedema.
Why are those important?
The interconnectedness of life/natural sciences and health/clinical data is a vast subject. As a quick summary - health and clinical data is fundamental in establishing the properties of diseases and the populations they affect. It helps to find the suitable condition and the right patients to treat. Health study data is not only crucial to furthering the understanding of the disease, such as symptoms and epidemiology but it also: - Is paramount in diagnostics - Helps validate a therapeutic strategy - Assesses the cost and value that can be gained with a treatment - Determines prevalence and severity of particular phenotypes - Since particular studies are often performed at specific locations, they can contribute to the greater diversity based on the patients (e.g. location-specific, underrepresented groups, lifestyle factors). There is also a separate trend that escalated in the COVID-19 pandemic, to monitor and detect the progression of diseases in real-time, which can include -omics components, e.g. a consortium effort that included Genomics England.
The impact
HDRUK's Innovation Gateway joins 5 other metasources already used by BiŌkeanós in addition to our curated list. After bringing in over 600 additional new datasets, the platform now links together over 6000 biomedical sources. To our knowledge, BiŌkeanós is the largest dedicated, open biomedical data collection and discovery tool. It allows for another step in our mission to deliver as much valuable data as possible to help patients in the age of Artificial Intelligence.