Placing Discovery Science at the heart of Big Data

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Clinical informatics is emerging as a powerful academic discipline and one in which the MRC
has recently invested over £100 million. A national ambition is to develop a network that can
leverage the unique opportunities available from UK science and the NHS to deliver novel
insights for improving health. Meta-analysis of clinical data is already showing considerable
value within healthcare delivery but for the MRC the challenge is to utilize this information for
research and there is an urgent need to place discovery science at the heart of clinical „Big
Data?. Within this application we seek to exploit unique expertise on the Birmingham campus
to address this challenge. Specifically we will utilize our excellence within genomics,
phenomics and immunomics as a platform to develop a series of research programmes
focused on novel interdisciplinary working and close alignment with patient informatics. A
particular focus is to utilize additional opportunities that can arise from the award of the
£7.3M MRC Clinical Research Infrastructure Initiative in 2014 and to place this investment at
the heart of a series of innovative research studies funded by the MRC Discovery Award. The
aim is to deliver a range of interdisciplinary early phase basic research awards which can be
subsequently be developed to support the UK ambition to be an international leader within
the exploitation of clinical data.