Snowflake joins Paddington Life Sciences Partners to support data-driven healthcare
The new collaboration will support the use of data and AI to improve population health.
Snowflake, the AI data cloud company, has joined Paddington Life Sciences Partners, an initiative bringing together NHS, industry, community and academic organisations with a shared commitment to improving population health in north west London.
The partnership group is a key driver of the Paddington Life Sciences development – a life sciences cluster led by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and centred around St Mary’s Hospital that aims to achieve major health, social and economic value.
Unlocking the potential of health data
Snowflake’s platform enables organisations, including several NHS Trusts, to store, manage, process and share their data securely. This new partnership with Paddington Life Sciences builds on an existing relationship between Snowflake and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
Snowflake helps the Trust deliver its Imperial Clinical Analytics, Research & Evaluation (iCARE), a secure data environment that holds both unidentified patient data and Whole System Integrated Care (WISC/DiscoverNow) data covering linked health, social care and biomedical data for 2.4 million diverse patients in North West London. This highly curated data set is a valuable asset that allows researchers and approved partners to better understand the health of populations and improve care.
The ability to securely collaborate on data sets has been cited as essential in the delivery of the NHS’ long-term strategy, including the OneLondon Sub-National Secure Data Environment. Snowflake’s platform enables all of the Trust’s data to be brought together into a single, governed platform which is key for collaboration and ensuring all users work on the same data.
Snowflake has agreed to work with the other Paddington Life Sciences Partners to improve health and reduce inequalities of our population in north west London, through four key areas of focus: social value, diversity and equity in clinical trials, data and digital, and place and space.
Erik Mayer, director of iCARE, said: “I am delighted that Snowflake has joined Paddington Life Sciences and as a key partner in delivering the iCARE Secure Data Environment and Digital Collaboration Space infrastructure to the benefit of all the Paddington Life Science Partners; it will be critical to ensure that we can deliver on our digital and data innovation and real-time monitoring solutions research focus areas, as well as our social value and diversity and inclusion in clinical trials workstreams.”
Supporting the NHS to become more data driven
Snowflake, who also works with three integrated care boards across London, is committed to helping NHS organisations improve patient outcomes by providing secure, accurate and timely data.
Janet Broome, account director, NHS for Snowflake, said: “Becoming a partner of Paddington Life Sciences is a great honour and privilege as we look to extend our existing partnership through Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and NWL ICB. We look forward to supporting data for good projects with the Snowflake AI data cloud to improve health outcomes across north west London.”
Snowflake’s secure data sharing capabilities includes data from across the NHS as well as other valuable third-party data sets — such as Met Office weather data, for example — to help identify trends and predict seasonality of demand for services. This rich partner ecosystem provides a strong foundation for collaboration with Paddington Life Sciences Partners.
Dr Suki Balendra, director of strategic partnerships for Paddington Life Sciences said: “Our partnership with Snowflake reflects the wider NHS ambition of a growing commitment to data collaboration. Using data to improve population health is one of the great assets of Paddington Life Sciences. We are really thrilled that Snowflake is bringing its data expertise and insights into our work, and we are really excited to build on their existing work with the Trust and the North West London ICS.”
Future opportunities
The functionality provided by Snowflake enables secure data environments such as iCARE to explore collaboration across organisations to securely link unique datasets with moving data, towards a unique digital research infrastructure.
This new interoperable data architecture will provide unique insights into population health, including social determinants of health to offer solutions for improved health and wellbeing, and not just highlight problems across diverse communities.
iCARE undertakes advanced analytics capabilities to practically improve the North West London NHS for staff and patients, with a view of scaling solutions, in a real world setting. Snowflake has provided continued support and guidance including training and knowledge sharing around the use of their services.
Paddington Life Sciences Partners include: British Land, Brockton Everlast, Convatec, Derwent London, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Imperial College London, Ipsen, IQVIA, Microsoft, Optum, Oracle Health, Snowflake, Takeda, The Paddington Partnership, Vertex and Vodafone. The Associate Partners are: Imperial College Health Partners, Imperial Health Charity, Healthcare Central London and North West London Pathology.
