One of the biggest frustrations reported by researchers is the time it takes to identify and access existing sources of data.
With so many digital assets at our disposal, we have never had a better opportunity to address this age-old problem and bring researchers and health data together to enable discoveries to improve people’s lives.
This is the ambition of the Health Data Research Innovation Gateway. Launched earlier this year, the Gateway provides a common entry point to discover and request access to UK health datasets, view research projects, publications and data tools. Innovative interactive features now provide a community forum for researchers to collaborate and connect through the available resources on the Gateway.
Last week, the Innovation Gateway took another major step forward with the gathering of resources from the seven Health Data Research Hubs.
Health Data Research Hubs are centres of excellence with expertise, tools, knowledge and ways of working to maximise the insights and innovations developed from the health data. Now, for the first time, their research collections are available to researchers to browse, offering a new format for new information and thereby the potential of accelerating new treatments and therapies.
The collections bring together related content into a single place, to not only display the unique service offerings of the Hubs but to also accelerate collaboration. The collection contents will continually be developed over time, in line with increasing demand for collaborative datasets.
Examples include the data, tools and resources provided by BREATHE – the Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health. This collection brings together 44 respiratory datasets, including those for COVID-19, so they can be easily discovered for vital research.
DISCOVER-NOW – the Health Data Research Hub for Real World Evidence – has created a collection of 16 datasets including the de-personalised Discover dataset that has been instrumental in supporting the emergency research response to COVID-19.
The collections are one of a series of developments to the Gateway planned over the coming months. The vision is to create a destination to share, manage and drive the ethical and safe use of data, exploiting cutting-edge analytics and big data technologies to improve health outcomes.
