About us
The South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub will use cutting-edge research to develop innovative digital technologies for disease diagnosis and treatment by leveraging smartphone, wearable, and sensor data alongside NHS data to create new clinical tools.
Overview
Led by University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, the £4 million South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub is supported by EPSRC to tackle healthcare inequalities and transform how patients are treated in South Yorkshire.
The Hub is part of the Insigneo Institute at the University of Sheffield and the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, covering a region of 1.4 million people affected by high levels of disease and health inequalities. The Hub will respond to unmet needs of urban and rural populations which are shaped by significant health and social inequalities.
To support this vision, the University of Sheffield has invested £1.8m in Data Connect and £3.6m in the Centre for Machine Intelligence.
It will also offer new opportunities for improving health and economic growth in the region through digital skills training and sharing, networking and knowledge exchange; connecting diverse stakeholders in digital health from academia, healthcare, industry, public and private organisations, and the wider public.
The hub will offer specialist health training for researchers, clinicians, patients and the public, made freely available online.
Why is it needed?
Accurate and earlier diagnosis is crucial for the prevention and treatment of disease. Digital data from daily life (such as that from wearable technology like smart watches) is an underutilised source of information, and integration with routine healthcare data can lead to healthier lives, better care and cost-saving to the NHS.
What will we do?
Our initial funding will allow us to do the following over the next three years:
- We will bring together the right people including patients, doctors, health professionals, industry, academics and the public to find out which tools they want most.
- We will set up the right infrastructure such as systems to store and analyse data, and create tools that can deliver the right information to patients, health professionals and the public.
- We will give people the right skills to be able to develop these digital health tools collaboratively and independently.
We will create a pipeline of ideas, projects and products suitable for use in the NHS.