BREATHE – The Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: UNLISTED
Abstract
What is the problem?
Everyone in the UK will have a respiratory illness at some point in their life. We have the best datasets in the world – which should be used to improve respiratory health – but these are currently very difficult to find, access and use.
What do we want to do?
People in the UK deserve the best respiratory health. We want to make respiratory health better by changing the way the NHS, pharmaceutical companies, charities and researchers use data.
How will we do it?
We will continue to develop BREATHE (the health data research hub for respiratory health) where trained, approved experts can access respiratory data to benefit patients and the public. We will make it easier for experts to use data in safe and secure ways.
How will this benefit patients?
BREATHE will support high quality research and cutting-edge innovation that will improve the lives of people living with respiratory conditions in the UK. It is important that patients and the public are involved with this project throughout, including from the very start. This is why there are patient and public members living with respiratory conditions who have worked with us on developing BREATHE and who are committed to delivering BREATHE’s goals.
Everyone in the UK will have a respiratory illness at some point in their life. We have the best datasets in the world – which should be used to improve respiratory health – but these are currently very difficult to find, access and use.
What do we want to do?
People in the UK deserve the best respiratory health. We want to make respiratory health better by changing the way the NHS, pharmaceutical companies, charities and researchers use data.
How will we do it?
We will continue to develop BREATHE (the health data research hub for respiratory health) where trained, approved experts can access respiratory data to benefit patients and the public. We will make it easier for experts to use data in safe and secure ways.
How will this benefit patients?
BREATHE will support high quality research and cutting-edge innovation that will improve the lives of people living with respiratory conditions in the UK. It is important that patients and the public are involved with this project throughout, including from the very start. This is why there are patient and public members living with respiratory conditions who have worked with us on developing BREATHE and who are committed to delivering BREATHE’s goals.
Technical Summary
Approximately 12.7 million people report a history of long-standing respiratory illness and respiratory disorders are the third leading cause of death. Lung diseases account for 10% of all inpatient bed-days, cost the NHS £11billion/year and society over £70billion/year. Despite having the richest respiratory datasets in the world, data are fragmented, inconsistently structured and cumbersome to access, severely limiting their utility.
Our vision is to transform the UK’s respiratory health through creating Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) respiratory rich datasets; providing expert support to catalyse their responsible use in respiratory research and innovation. We will position the UK at the forefront of data driven innovation; creating a ‘one-stop’ service for trustworthy, multi-stakeholder utilisation of curated respiratory data for public, private and third sector benefit. Our UK-wide consortium provides the necessary expertise. Our priorities have been co-developed with patients, the public, industry and med-tech partners; together we have identified
major opportunities for early, high-profile, case studies.
This capital award is to support continuing development of the BREATHE respiratory data platform. New data assets will be made available to the UK Health Data Research (HDR) Alliance and through the HDR Research Innovation Gateway. We will continue to develop a UK Respiratory Data Library (with metadata catalogue), curate and link data, and provide open-source algorithms to support secure analyses thereby enhancing the interoperability of datasets. This expandable platform will for example, enable the incorporation of data from wearable sensors into NHS apps to transform respiratory health, supporting rapid evaluation of new drugs and devices in real-world settings, and yielding evidence to underpin policy initiatives.
BREATHE will support stakeholders to securely use data to meet their diverse needs. We will work proactively with other Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) to enhance the UK’s competitiveness.
Our vision is to transform the UK’s respiratory health through creating Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) respiratory rich datasets; providing expert support to catalyse their responsible use in respiratory research and innovation. We will position the UK at the forefront of data driven innovation; creating a ‘one-stop’ service for trustworthy, multi-stakeholder utilisation of curated respiratory data for public, private and third sector benefit. Our UK-wide consortium provides the necessary expertise. Our priorities have been co-developed with patients, the public, industry and med-tech partners; together we have identified
major opportunities for early, high-profile, case studies.
This capital award is to support continuing development of the BREATHE respiratory data platform. New data assets will be made available to the UK Health Data Research (HDR) Alliance and through the HDR Research Innovation Gateway. We will continue to develop a UK Respiratory Data Library (with metadata catalogue), curate and link data, and provide open-source algorithms to support secure analyses thereby enhancing the interoperability of datasets. This expandable platform will for example, enable the incorporation of data from wearable sensors into NHS apps to transform respiratory health, supporting rapid evaluation of new drugs and devices in real-world settings, and yielding evidence to underpin policy initiatives.
BREATHE will support stakeholders to securely use data to meet their diverse needs. We will work proactively with other Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) to enhance the UK’s competitiveness.
Organisations
Title | Synthetic asthma dataset |
Description | We attempted to create a synthetic dataset from the Welsh Asthma Observatory (WAO) data using the Diveplane GEMINAI tool. Unfortunately the tool was difficult to use and it took months of engineering to get a synthetic version of the WAO. However, this is too close to the real data to be useful. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Unfortunately the data created are too close to the real data and are not really fit for purpose in terms of mass training, lowering governance etc. We learned a huge amount from the process in terms of permissions, replication of data with integrity / fidelity (statistical characteristics) without a backward path to the real data, but the world of data and AI moved so quickly during this period that you can now do a 260m row dataset in 15 min, and outcomes would be better than we achieved in this project. |