Dr Jim Hughes, director of digital and knowledge programmes for the Psychological Well being Analysis for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) and strategic advisor digital and knowledge programmes at Mersey Care NHS Basis Belief (Credit score: Mersey Care NHS FT)
Mersey Care NHS Basis Belief will set up a Safe Knowledge Atmosphere (SDE) for psychological well being analysis to enhance understanding of psychological well being circumstances and coverings.
The belief is working in partnership with the College of Liverpool by way of the Merseyside-based Psychological Well being Analysis for Innovation Centre (M-RIC) and has acquired greater than £2.7 million funding from the Nationwide Institute for Well being and Care Analysis (NIHR).
The funding permits Mersey Care to work with DATAMIND, the UK’s nationwide knowledge infrastructure for psychological well being analysis, to determine a SDE for NIHR’s Psychological Well being Translational Analysis Collaboration (MH-TRC).
The safe knowledge platform will obtain, retailer and analyse affected person knowledge from the MH-TRC, and assist linkage of MH-TRC knowledge with different health-related datasets such because the NHS SDE networks (regional NHS analysis hubs), making it simpler for researchers to entry knowledge to higher perceive psychological well being circumstances and enhance remedies.
Dr Noir Thomas, chief medical officer at Mersey Care NHS Basis Belief, mentioned: “As a analysis lively belief, Mersey Care is proud to be the NHS belief appointed to steer on NIHR’s SDE for the MH-TRC.
“The undertaking will present a simplified, safe and efficient means for researchers to entry the info they want. This protects time for busy clinicians and breaks down obstacles for researchers.
“In the end, it will allow extra ground-breaking research to happen, all of which have the potential to rework and enhance care and coverings for service customers and sufferers throughout the nation.”
The undertaking brings collectively a community of the MH-TRC, 12 universities, seven psychological well being trusts, and all 11 NHS safe knowledge environments.
The MH-TRC SDE will present a federated knowledge structure design, that may imply researchers will be capable of hyperlink and entry knowledge throughout a spread of NHS and different knowledge sources.
This establishes a unified and safe infrastructure for psychological well being analysis, making a single ‘entrance door’ for researchers to entry knowledge by way of the DATAMIND trusted analysis surroundings.
Professor Ann John, principal investigator and co-director at DATAMIND, mentioned: “We’re delighted to collaborate with Mersey Care and our companions to develop our current trusted analysis surroundings by federating and enriching, knowledge collected primarily for analysis, throughout NHS knowledge sources.
“This initiative unites main UK psychological well being knowledge improvements, such because the UKRI Psychological Well being Platform, by way of DATAMIND, to create an at-scale, safe and linked infrastructure for psychological well being analysis.
“By making high-quality psychological well being knowledge extra accessible and usable for accepted researchers, we will speed up discoveries that enhance lives throughout the UK and past.”
NHS England launched a ‘widespread entrance door’, in partnership with Well being Knowledge Analysis UK, to provide well being researchers entry to its SDE community final yr.
The event of an open portal into SDEs got here after an impartial evaluate by Professor Cathie Sudlow, chief scientist at Well being Knowledge Analysis UK, revealed in November 2024, known as for obstacles to accessing NHS affected person knowledge to be eliminated in order that it may be used for analysis to additional medical advances.
