The first posts are now being advertised for a pioneering new centre which could revolutionise healthcare. The University of Dundee is to provide a focus for research on social dimensions of health with the establishment of a new Centre for Health Informatics in partnership with Tayside Primary Care Trust. The £1.8 million initiative will bring 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 project is one of three successful initiatives from the University of Dundee to have secured a total of £8,196,000 under this round of the Science Research Investment Fund.
The Centre for Health Informatics will be built at the Ninewells site, close to the University's Tayside Centre for General 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, a research group involving the University's Departments of Clinical Pharmacology, General Practice and Medicine. Professor Davey 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 foundation 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. MEMO has already shown how useful this resource is for research to establish an international reputation for work on drug safety and through the DARTS project on diabetes. The Centre for Health Informatics will provide purpose built new facilities to expand the range of projects and attract new researchers to realise Tayside's unique opportunities.
The centre will be geared to handle sensitive health data in a secure system, linking information on dental health for example with medical data. "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. "The centre's work would, of course, be strictly within the confines of the Data Protection Act and indeed will conduct research on its implications for health research. On the whole this is excellent news for Tayside!"
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./ends
Contact
Professor Peter Davey
01382 632575
peter@memo.dundee.ac.uk
Professor Nigel Pitts, DHSRU
01382 635959
n.b.pitts@dundee.ac.uk
Note for edtiors - artist's impression available
peter@memo.dundee.ac.uk