Nuffield Health partners with Leicester Real World Evidence Unit

We have partnered with Leicester Real World Evidence Unit to leverage the latest big data analytics to design pioneering health services which improve patient outcomes. The three-year project will bring together experts across health specialisms, employing computing and machine learning to leverage existing data and pioneer future health and wellbeing service delivery.

Leicester Real World Evidence Unit, funded by the University of Leicester and headed up by Professor Kamlesh Khunti, works with clinical, academic and industrial investigators to design and deliver high quality real world evidence studies.

As one of the few organisations that records medical and lifestyle data from clients including an individual’s exercise, diet, lifestyle, physiological, psychological and medical data, we hold one of Europe’s most unique data sets. Through utilising anonymised data sets, the partnership will be able to track the impact of interventions and utilise advanced evaluation techniques to identify opportunities for new services on a macro scale. 

Our Head of Clinical Research & Outcomes, Dr. Ben Kelly, said: “The power of data is becoming more and more appreciated, not least across healthcare. We know that to design the best patient pathways we need to have a deep understanding of our previous, current and future services. We feel we can become a world leader in service development and delivery by leveraging the latest data knowledge and technology.”

Starting in 2019, the partnership between will benefit wider society by sharing insights and producing publicly available toolkits. These will be developed from robust research, to improve outcomes for individuals and establish service models in areas of treatment which are not currently meeting the needs of the population. The partnership will also fund a research associate, a data architect and commission a number of academic papers for public consumption.

Prof Thomas Yates, the lead for lifestyle research conducted within the Diabetes Research Centre, said: “This partnership provides a unique opportunity to harness lifestyle and clinical data to better understand the drivers of health and wellbeing within a United Kingdom population and to understand how these can then be harnessed in the optimisation of clinical and lifestyle services”.

Last updated Thursday 11 April 2019

First published on Thursday 11 April 2019