A new respiratory data hub has been set up which will give researchers access to data, helping them find new treatments for lung diseases.
Funded by Health Data Research UK, a total of seven data hubs have been launched bringing together the UK’s health data to make discoveries that improve people’s lives.
Dr Jennifer Quint (pictured), reader at Imperial College London and respiratory consultant at Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, is the deputy director and clinical lead for the new data hub.
The respiratory focused hub, titled BREATHE, is a collaboration between Imperial College London, the University of Edinburgh and University of Leicester, with support from patients from the Trust.
BREATHE will give researchers and industry access to anonymised data on respiratory disease more quickly and efficiently. The research data available will also be of higher quality and will be standardised. This standardisation means that data collected from different studies can all be analysed at once to answer a new question, without losing the detail from each of the initial studies.
Dr Quint’s team will begin by looking at asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and plan to expand to other respiratory diseases including interstitial lung diseases (ILD), respiratory infections, and pneumonia.
A vital part of the success of the hubs is demonstrating how the partnership between patients, the NHS, Industry and Academia can provide valuable developments that can be fed back into the NHS, and ultimately benefit patients through better treatments or management of chronic respiratory conditions.
From the start Dr Quint and her team made sure to include patients and carers to help inform the project. She has also included patient representatives on the leadership team for the project to ensure that patients are involved in the decisions about how data will be used going forward and to ensure the benefits are returned to the NHS.
Dr Quint said: “A vital part of the success of the hubs is demonstrating how the partnership between different sectors can provide valuable developments that can be fed back into the NHS, and ultimately benefit patients through better treatments or management of chronic conditions.”
Alongside the respiratory hub, six other hubs will focus on cancer, eye health, inflammatory bowel disease, acute care, clinical trials and real-world data.
If any patient is interested in getting involved with the team, please contact Dr Jennifer Quint.
A video of Dr Jennifer Quint talking about the hub can be found here.