£37.5m investment in Digital Innovation Hubs to tackle Britain’s biggest health challenges

Faster development of new treatments for diseases like cancer, heart disease and asthma are set to emerge following a £37.5 million investment in new Digital Innovation Hubs across the UK (July 16th).The new hubs will help connect regional health and care data with biomedical data in secure environments. This will pave the way for NHS, academic researchers and industry innovators to harness scientific knowledge and emerging technologies to develop new drugs and devices and improve health services.Funded through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the Digital Innovation Hubs will be led by Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), the national institute for data science in health, delivering on behalf of UK Research and Innovation.Between three and five hubs will be created across the UK over the next three years to enable innovation that will have a long-lasting impact on improving the health of the public. The hubs will provide safe, secure and controlled environments for data and enable NHS clinicians to work together with health researchers, data scientists, computer scientists, ethicists, social scientists and the public.