Today, BC Platforms, a global leader in real-world data, healthcare data management, and analytics, announced an extended, joint partnership with the University of Nottingham (UoN) and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) to provide data sharing platforms and tools facilitating data sharing, security, and advanced analyses including Trusted Research Environments (TREs*). The outputs of analysing such data, from both clinical and basic research, have the potential to transform our understanding of important healthcare trends, as well as studying devastating diseases such as cancer and diabetes up to the population level. They could also potentially help unlock innovative new solutions and therapies for patients everywhere.
Both the UoN and NUH are connected via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), with a global outlook to deliver the best outcomes to patients and the public. To help strengthen the institutions’ collaboration, Trusted Research Environments (TREs*), secure computing environments that manage sensitive patient data, are being established to facilitate faster, more secure data sharing.
Professor Philip Quinlan, Director of Health Informatics at the University of Nottingham, and Head of the Informatics Theme at NIHR Nottingham BRC, said: “This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to utilising health data and advanced in-house technology to make a real-world impact. Throughout our long-standing partnership with BC Platforms, we have pushed each other to deliver the best methods, products and services to support our respective global research programmes. Now, for the first time, we have the same platform between NUH and UoN to support researchers with analysing their data in appropriately secured environments – helping to support our ambitions to connect and participate in international programmes, while also maintaining critical data security and confidentiality.”
Nino da Silva, Global Lead, Healthcare & Technology, BC Platforms, said: “At BC Platforms, we are focused on advancing patient health by accelerating the global access and use of high-quality, real-world data. Our long-standing collaboration with Nottingham is evidence of this focus and our passion to ultimately support and improve patients’ health and quality of life. The previous success of applying open-source development on top of our technology by Prof Quinlan’s team has proven to be successful. It has led to several tools that today provide practical value for end-users. We are excited about the continuation and acceleration provided by this TRE-facilitated research at Nottingham and to extending our important work supporting Prof Quinlan and his team – from data to health.”
Dr Sube Banerjee, Faculty Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Medicine and Health Sciences, stated: “Our teams within Health Informatics in the School of Medicine are focused on accelerating our ability to better understand and tackle global health challenges – the world’s ‘wicked problems.’ Prof Philip Quinlan’s team has been developing tools using open-source software and open standards to share access to data and insights rapidly.
“Having previously worked very closely on the nationally-recognised CO-CONNECT project**, this renewal of our joint programme is a strong future looking statement that, for the first time, brings in NUH via the NIHR Nottingham BRC. Data can be transformative to patients, and this partnership is a clear example of Nottingham’s leadership in the field.”
BC Platforms has collaborated with the UK-based University of Nottingham since 2017, applying deep experience, knowledge, and technical solutions to make data more findable for life sciences research. Together, they have strived to remove barriers and respond to researchers’ needs to deliver actionable evidence that improves patient care and drug development. This includes a successful, long-term collaboration with the University of Nottingham and Health Data Research UK.
* TREs, also known as ‘Secure Data Environments’ (SDEs) or ‘Secure Processing Environments’ (SPEs), are secure computing environments that manage sensitive patient data while still allowing access to researchers. They are increasingly vital tools that enable collaborative research, especially where data sharing has previously posed security and privacy-related risks.
** For more information, see: Jefferson E, Milligan G, Johnston J, et al. The Challenges and Lessons Learned Building a New UK Infrastructure for Finding and Accessing Population-Wide COVID-19 Data for Research and Public Health Analysis: The CO-CONNECT Project. J Med Internet Res 2024;26:e50235. https://www.jmir.org/2024/1/e50235. DOI: 10.2196/50235.