Multi-million EPSRC funding for KCL DRIVE-Health CDT

March 13, 2024
DRIVE-Health has been awarded £7.9 million from The Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for student intake from 2024 onwards. DRIVE-Health is one of 65 CDTs which received funding, totalling more than £1 billion.

Using seed funding from King’s Centre for Doctoral Studies awarded in 2020, DRIVE-Health has trained 30 students to date. Building on this, the new award will support five additional cohorts at King’s, totalling at least 85 talented PhD students. The CDT is expecting to welcome its fourth intake of at least 15 students in October 2024.

DRIVE-Health is the first health data science training centre in the UK to harness cross-sector collaboration across the NHS, industry, enterprise, policy makers, and academia. Working with diverse partners, DRIVE-Health PhD students develop cutting-edge models which leverage healthcare data to improve patient outcomes, streamline operations, and enhance clinical decision-making processes.

EPSRC CDT DRIVE-Health’s vision is informed by three core goals:
  • To provide world-class training in health data science research to the next generation of health data scientists, who will have the multidisciplinary skills needed to enable transformations in public health and breakthrough treatments.
  • To solve the most challenging problems in data-driven health research through a diverse community of the brightest minds in health data science and an open, collaborative culture which fosters exchange and champions innovation.
  • To co-create a translational cross-sector collaboration with the NHS, industry, enterprise, policy makers and academia.
Professor Richard Dobson, Co-Director of DRIVE-Health and Professor of Medical Informatics at King’s IoPPN, says "As more data from biological, social, genomic, imaging, smart devices, and electronic health records becomes available, there are significant opportunities to revolutionise the way healthcare is delivered. Through DRIVE-Health, we will train some of the brightest minds in health data science to develop cutting-edge tools which utilise data to improve healthcare systems and patient outcomes."

"This is an exciting time for medicine, with new data paradigms creating a novel research and implementation landscape covering the full span from cell to society. Over the next nine years, DRIVE-Health will nurture world-class researchers that will chart that landscape and drive the UK’s health data agenda." Professor Vasa Curcin, Co-Director of DRIVE-Health and Professor of Health Informatics at King’s FoLSM.

The DRIVE-Health PhD Programme (2024-2032) focuses on five key scientific research themes: 
  1. Sustainable health data systems engineering: Investigates methods to develop secure and scalable software systems for healthcare. Theme lead: Dr Zina Ibrahim.
  2. Multimodal patient data streams: Integrates diverse patient data types for analysis, including wearables and electronic health records. Theme lead: Dr Jorge Cardoso.
  3. Complex simulations and digital twins: Builds simulated environments to train AI models for healthcare applications. Theme lead: Dr Steffen Zschaler.
  4. Next-generation clinical user interfaces: Ensures healthcare data science applications are usable in clinical settings. Theme lead: Professor Nick Holliman.
  5. Co-designing impactful patient-centric healthcare solutions: Co-producing and co-designing healthcare solutions to maximise impact across all themes. Theme lead: Professor Claire Steves.
On top of the £7.9m provided by the EPSRC, DRIVE-Health has received over £5.1m from partners, as well as in-kind contributions worth nearly £4m.

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January 31, 2025
We’re pleased to announce that C hris Tomlinson from LifeArc , will deliver our February Seminar Series with his talk, "Translational Clinical Data Science: from patient data to patient impact " . Chris will give an overview of LifeArc, a self-funded translational research charity, seeking to deliver patient benefit and address unmet needs. As UK Health Data & AI lead, he will focus on how they harness data science and AI to fulfil their aim: to ‘make life sciences, life changing’. Chris is a clinician by background, specialising in Anaesthesia & Intensive Care, before transitioning to full-time research. His work leverages electronic health records, epidemiology and artificial intelligence at scale to advance our understanding of health and disease, and address the fundamental challenges of precision medicine. His research has been featured in top medical journals and informed both policy and clinical practice internationally. Seminar Series Event: "Translational Clinical Data Science: from patient data to patient impact" Date and Time: Thursday 27 February 2025, 15:00 – 16.00 hrs (BST) Location: Hodgkin Building, Classroom 6, Guy's Campus Attendance: Mandatory for all DRIVE-Health students Registration: Students, alumni and wider King's College London research community, please email drive-health-cdt@kcl.ac.uk to register.
January 6, 2025
We’re pleased to announce that Stuart Harrison from ETHOS , will deliver our first 2025 Seminar Series with his talk, "Effective deployment of digital health focused technology at scale " . Stuart has led the Clinical Safety movement in the NHS alongside some of the most prominent Clinical leaders for over 20 years. Stuart is now the co-founder & director of ETHOS, a company providing ethical services to the health industry. Seminar Series Event: "Effective deployment of digital health focused technology at scale" Date and Time: 15:00 – 16.00, Wednesday 29 January 2025 Location: The Judy Dunn Room, Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Building, Denmark Hill Campus, Memory Lane, London SE5 8AF Registration: EPSRC DRIVE-Health students, alumni and wider King's College London research community. Please email drive-health-cdt@kcl.ac.uk to register interest. Abstract: ETHOS will provide insight into the requirements for the safe, secure, and effective deployment of digital health focused technology at scale. Discussions concerning early research problem identification, health system challenges and taking research through to minimum viable product (MVP) and minimum marketable product (MMP). The objective is to highlight the benefit of earlier alignment with regulatory challenges to aid successful interventions and to demonstrate standards can be an enabler not a barrier to innovation. Stuart Harrison has led the Clinical Safety movement in the NHS alongside some of the most prominent Clinical leaders for over 20 years. Stuart is now the co-founder & director of a company providing ethical services to the health industry. ETHOS Ltd was formed in 2014 as a result of a feasibility study completed in partnership with a large pharmaceutical company in the interests of furthering medical science / MedTech innovation. ETHOS was formed from subject matter experts in the compliance requirements for the NHS covering security, information governance, clinical safety, Medical Devices and General Data Protection Regulations. Stuart’s background is Engineering, particularly safety critical industries where safety has immediate risk to harm to system users or the wider general population. He was one of the original authors of the clinical safety standards. An expert advisor (BSI UK) international safety, security, and effectiveness standards; leading this area since 2017 and creating a legacy from the widely recognised NHS clinical safety practises into the international health informatics industry. Stuart has significantly contributed to over 1000 health software systems being clinically assured and provided subject matter input to over 3000 service incidents with patient safety impact in the NHS. He led the creation of clinical risk management toolkits to enable self-certification across the industry for low-risk unregulated health software & ensuring they are compatible with new medical device regulations. A specialist advisor to NICE for medical technology and work closely with MHRA and other arm’s length bodies where patient safety and health software initiatives are needed. A steering group member and advisor to many professional institutions and organisations representing digital health; Stuart is helping to influence safety culture and methods across a number of domains. Stuart was co-author of the government’s Regulators Pioneer Fund bid to address the assurance of AI & machine learning in health software. Having successfully facilitated a £1M research grant being awarded to NHS Digital & MHRA. Digital Leader finalist – Digital City Awards 2021. Stuart is currently studying part time for a PhD at the University of Warwick on the subject of clinical decision supporting systems including safety concepts for emerging technology & complementary regulatory frameworks, the inclusion of mobile health data into safer decision making and exploring the lifecycle models of clinical decision supporting systems.
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