Response to the Sudlow Review: uniting the UK’s health data
Response to the Sudlow Review: uniting the UK’s health data
Today [Friday 8 November] Professor Cathie Sudlow’s independent review of the UK health data landscape, Uniting the UK’s Health Data: A Huge Opportunity for Society has been published. The review’s findings set out a bold vision for overcoming the barriers and inefficiencies that currently delay the safe and secure use of health data to improve lives.
Professor Sir Rory Collins, Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank, said:
“The Sudlow Review is right, we must now treat the UK’s health data like the critical infrastructure that it is. Connected health data can help the NHS deliver better care for everyone, manage the next pandemic, and rapidly get the right treatment to the right patients. We need to use the UK’s wealth of de-identified health data carefully, securely and to its full potential. Not doing so impedes scientific discovery.
“The UK supports globally important health research projects like UK Biobank, Genomics England and the recently initiated Our Future Health. They are already having an incredible impact on our understanding of how to better prevent and treat disease, but they would be able to do so much more if we followed the steps laid out in the Sudlow Review to join up the UK’s health data.
“UK Biobank alone has led to over 12,500 published scientific studies that describe opportunities for new diagnoses and treatments for everything from cancer to diabetes, heart disease and depression. This has been done with the help of altruistic volunteers directly providing data, which have then been linked to their hospital and cancer records. However, so much more could have been achieved if other health data were not trapped in the silos of GP practices, dentists and opticians. Diseases like arthritis, dementia, asthma and mental health conditions are almost exclusively seen and managed by GPs, whilst data from opticians and dentists would give us insights we can’t get anywhere else.
“The Secretary of State for Health recently announced plans to make the GP data of consented participants available for studies like UK Biobank. Once this has been done, researchers will be able to make many more discoveries that lead to improvements in the way diseases are prevented and treated. The implementation of the Sudlow Report recommendations will truly be a transformative moment for health research and healthcare delivery.”
The review was commissioned by the Chief Medical Officer for England and UK Government’s Chief Medical Adviser, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, NHS England’s National Director of Transformation, Dr Timothy Ferris (now Dr Vin Diwakar, Medical Director for Transformation), and the UK’s National Statistician Professor Sir Ian Diamond, with the support of the Chief Medical Officers in the devolved nations.
Read more about paving way for UK Biobank access to GP data.