Through data partnerships we’re accelerating healthcare innovations to help make improvements to treatment and care for patients by informing research, service improvement, drug discovery, medical technology and diagnostic development.
Working with technology and data partners enables us to produce and analyse high quality data, which can help with vital research and unlock new ways to treat people.
Through robust agreements with carefully selected partners, we can grant access rights to specific anonymised healthcare data sets and information. This will always be for a defined purpose which aims to improve healthcare and is subject to strict approval processes.
Why partner with us?
Newcastle Hospitals is one of the busiest and largest NHS hospital trusts in the country. We have around 15,000 staff and an annual budget of £1.6 billion.
We are in the top five providers of specialised health services in the country supporting people with a range of rare and complex medical, surgical and neurological conditions, cancers and genetic orders.
Our world class hospitals and services and highly skilled clinicians and scientists provide research-led high-quality care regionally, nationally and internationally.
Clinical research is essential if we are to stay at the forefront of innovative and effective treatment and care.
Our hospitals are involved in significant programmes of clinical research, evaluation and collaboration with industry, with a global reach.
We employ over 400 people who are involved in the delivery of clinical trials and we have studies and trials taking place in place in nearly every clinical speciality across the hospitals.
- We have around 500 trials running at any one time
- Every year we recruit around 14,000 patients to clinical trials and studies
- We have a range of trials, from first-in-human to vaccine trials and observational studies
The north east also has a well-established life science sector – around 200 companies contributing upwards of £1.1 billion – which we actively collaborate with.
If you would like to discuss partnering with us please contact the commercial enterprise team [email protected].
What data do we collect at Newcastle Hospitals?
Through our services and research activity, lots of data is collected and held by Newcastle Hospitals.
This includes:
- Disease specific data.
- Data about treatment and care.
- Use of different medicines and drugs.
We also collect information about clinical samples, x-rays and scans.
This data can aid researchers, scientists and doctors in developing new approaches or treatments.
Protecting patient confidentiality
Any information that could identify an individual would be removed from data before access is given outside Newcastle Hospitals’ systems.
The only exception to this above would be if a patient has provided full, explicit consent to share their identifiable information.
Different formats for the data could include:
- Anonymised – any means of identification is permanently removed from data. This means that it is no longer considered personal data and is not subject to data protection laws.
- Pseudonymised – means of identification are temporarily replaced with ‘placeholder’ values, such as random numbers or codes, before the data leaves NHS systems. This can be helpful where there may be a future need to re-identify the data if it’s returned for internal use.
- Synthetic data or artificial data – data that is artificially generated by a computer to mimic real-world data. It contains no real patient records or sensitive information, allowing it to be used for testing, conducting simulations and research, while protecting privacy.
What processes are in place if someone wishes to opt out of sharing their data for research purposes?
Newcastle Hospitals has a long history of research activity, as such we have well established processes in place for patients to consent to their data being used.
If patients do not wish to share their data for research purposes they can visit the national data opt out website.
What’s the process for requesting and granting access to Newcastle Hospitals’ data?
We have strict confidentiality and intellectual property processes, which govern use of the Newcastle Hospitals data and provide clear terms and conditions.
Safe sharing of our data is governed by a dedicated group, which assesses legal and ethical consent, validity and purpose of the request.
Any external organisations wishing to enquire about collaborating with Newcastle Hospitals should email [email protected]
You can read more about NHS data partnerships in England here.
