Cambridge University Hospitals Trust signs five-year AI deal to improve patient care

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) has signed a five-year contract with artificial intelligence (AI) company Sensyne Health to improve care and reduce patient waiting times.

The Sensyne and CUH researchers will use the AI software to search large datasets consisting of three million anonymised patient records in order to spot patterns in disease, with the aim of identifying causes and opening up new treatment opportunities.

The research will focus on the trust’s specialisms of cancer, cardiovascular disease and rare diseases.

It will also explore:

• Clinical decision tools to support patient care
• Retrospective clinical data, and the generation of synthetic control arms to support clinical trials more effectively, speeding up the process of drug development
• Drug discovery and new medicines aimed at treating rare and common diseases

Shedding light on the causes of disease

Dr Ashley Shaw, CUH medical director, said: “At CUH we use a wide range of research to constantly improve the lives of patients both locally and around the world. Sitting at the heart of Europe’s biggest life sciences campus, alongside some of the world’s most pre-eminent academics and industrial partners, we know the power of collaborations to bring about discoveries that will benefit us all. By searching large de-identified datasets, machine learning tools can spot patterns which are otherwise indiscernible, shedding light on causes of disease and opening up new treatment opportunities.”

Sensyne has similar agreements with 12 other NHS results, and as a result of the collaboration with CUH, will now have access to a total of 25.5m anonymised patient records, about half in the UK and half in the US.

CUH will also receive 4,285,714 ordinary shares in Sensyne Health and receive an investment of up to £350,000 per year over the five-year term of the contract, from Sensyne, for investments in information technology to enable the collection and analysis of the data. The trust will receive a royalty on revenues generated from the research, which will then be reinvested into the NHS.

In a statement on its website to reassure patients, the trust said that it was “convinced that our agreement with Sensyne Health safeguards the anonymity of data. Under the terms of the contract with Sensyne Health, our NHS Trust is resourced with the investment required to de-identify data prior to making it available to Sensyne Health. The provision of data will operate under a Data Processing Protocol under our ethical oversight.”

Paul Drayson, Sensyne Health’s CEO, said that the trust had “invested heavily in its digital infrastructure and the curation of its data which means we can start work immediately. Together we aim to use the power of ethical AI to make a real difference in finding new and better ways to treat cancer and other complex diseases.”