Sensyne Health signs EY agreement, Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation board members revealed, and more UK digital health news briefs

Also: institute argues that all NHS trusts should have a CTO at board level, and MPs urge the government to appoint a cybersecurity minister.
By Leontina Postelnicu
08:11 am
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Oxford-based Sensyne Health announces partnership with EY. Former UK science minister Lord (Paul) Drayson’s Sensyne Health has signed a Strategic Advisory Services agreement with EY to scale up the business and build on its business model. The company has inked partnerships with three NHS trusts in England to analyse anonymised patient data using its clinical AI technology to accelerate medical research, and has signed up to the Department of Health and Social Care’s initial code of conduct for AI and data-driven health care technology.

“EY is recognised for their knowledge in the fast developing field of big data analytics and the associated valuation models needed to underpin equitable deal structures involving large datasets. We are delighted to be working together to create an ethical framework for the analysis of patient medical data for patient benefit,” Lord Drayson said.
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UK government announces Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation board members. Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, and Kriti Sharma, Sage Group Artificial Intelligence VP, are two of the experts that will sit on the UK's Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation board, bringing together advisors from academia and industry to help guide ethical and innovative uses of data. The centre will be chaired by Roger Taylor, founder of healthcare data firm Dr Foster, who is also part of the UK’s HealthTech Advisory board, an initiative announced earlier this year by health and social care secretary Matt Hancock.

“It is vital powerful data-driven technologies such as artificial intelligence are deployed in the interests of society while supporting innovation. I look forward to working closely with my new board members to develop our work-plan and prioritising the issues we need to consider,” Taylor said.
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NHS long-term plan should ensure NHS trusts have a CTO at board level, think-tank says. A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) argues that data, technology and innovation should be the “main drivers of change” ahead of the publication of the NHS long-term plan. The government announced in June a new funding settlement that will see NHS England’s budget grow on average by 3.4 percent in real terms in each of the next five years (or £20.5 billion by 2023/2024), and the document, currently being drafted, will determine how the extra spending should be invested.

Senior Research Fellow at the IPPR Harry Quilter-Pinner, author of the report, said the long-term plan should “ensure that all NHS trusts have a chief technology officer at board level with the resources to begin driving change”. However, a ComRes survey commissioned by the institute, asking the public how NHS funding should be allocated, found digital access to services to be the lowest priority based on the responses of around 1,800 adults in England.

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MPs call for more action to boost UK's cyber defence capabilities. A joint committee on the UK’s national security strategy has urged the government to appoint a cybersecurity minister that would be responsible for improving the cyber resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI).

“The 2017 WannaCry attack, which affected the NHS, also demonstrated that cyber attacks need not target critical national infrastructure deliberately to have significant consequences,” MPs wrote in a new report published this week. Ciaran Martin, CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, said 2017 was the year they "learned to watch out for the reckless as well as the deliberate".

Committee chair Margaret Beckett said:

“It is a matter of real urgency that the Government makes clear which Cabinet Minister has cross-government responsibility for driving and delivering improved cyber security, especially in relation to our critical national infrastructure. There are a whole host of areas where the Government could be doing much more, especially in creating wider cultural change that emphasises the need for continual improvement to cyber resilience across CNI sectors."

 

Twitter: @1Leontina
Contact the author: lpostelnicu@himss.org

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