Dundee welcomes £8 million boost

Work has now started on three ambitious projects in science and health following an £8 million infrastructure boost announced in late August.

The three University projects attracted a total of £8,196,000 under the latest round of the Science Research Investment Fund which includes funding of £1,098,000 from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council.

The three successful projects are:
Centre for Health Informatics £1,196,000
This will provide a focus for research on social dimensions of health by bringing together anonymised data from a range of health projects and sources creating a pool of secure information for research and its translation into practice. The centre will be built at the Ninewells site close to the University's Tayside Centre for General Practice and will be created in partnership with Tayside Primary Care Trust. (see inset)

Centre for multi-disciplinary research in engineering and physical science £3,000,000
This will expand and improve facilities bringing groups conducting related research closer together including newbuild dedicated to technology to support older people, improved concrete technology research laboratories expanded geotechnical engineering laboratories specialist laboratories for tissue engineering, medical and biomedical engineering and product design

Centre for Interdisciplinary research £4,000,000
This state of the art medical research centre will assist biomedical scientists in their quest against diseases such as cancer, inflammation and Alzheimer's Disease. Leading cancer research scientist Professor Sir David Lane of the University's Ninewells Hospital said: " Its presence in Dundee will accelerate the enormous biomedical effort already driving forward here, and underpins the university's position as a world leader in biomedical science."

Centre for Health Informatics

The University will provide a focus for research on social dimensions of health with the establishment of the new Centre for Health Informatics. The £1.8 million initiative will bring together anonymised data from a range of health projects and sources - including the Dental Health Research Unit - creating a pool of secure information for research and its translation into practice.

Research groups within the centre will include the Dental Health Services Research Unit as well as medical scientists working on asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, drug safety, genetic epidemiology and health technology including the impact of information technology on health. The interaction between biological, clinical and social scientists will facilitate the study of different aspects of health within the same population and research is also expected to lead to the identification of new targets for biotechnology and the development of better treatments and healthcare.

The project is being led by Professor Peter Davey of the Medicines Monitoring Unit, who said:

"Health care information is an extremely valuable resource with a wide range of applications. We are incredibly fortunate in Tayside to have superb collaboration between colleagues working for NHS Tayside and the University of Dundee. This will allow the centre to bring together information about health and to look at ways at how to manage it in the most effective way.

Health informatics has the potential to revolutionise healthcare by improving research that will have direct benefits for the treatment of patients.

"The Centre will help Scotland to develop solutions to the ethical and technical barriers to realising the full research value of health data. In future Scotland will be able to conduct long-term studies of health in a population of 5,000,000 people using highly efficient methods for data management. In the short term the centre will be highly attractive to biotechnology companies seeking to identify promising targets for innovation."

One of the key stones on which the new Dundee centre is based, is Tayside's role in using a unique national patient identifier, the Community Health Index Number in all health care activities. This allows information from primary or secondary care to be linked for each individual. NHS Tayside is already far ahead of the rest of Scotland, England and Wales, the US and most of Europe in health informatics because of the introduction of this number. Only in Tayside is it fully implemented in all health activities. "This could mean that, say, data collected from volunteers recruited for a study into tooth decay might also be used to inform research into heart disease," said Professor Davey. Two key programmes of research involving the University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will examine population health and the use of incentives to improve efficiency and quality of healthcare. The first of these also builds on the partnership between the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews.

The new centre is expected to be complete by next summer and will house 60 staff including 20 new posts.

Caption - An artist's impression of the new Centre for Health Informatics

Next Page
Return to October 2001 Contact