Elly Yates-Roberts |
Our Future Health – a UK-based health research programme – will use Microsoft Azure to store and analyse data to improve the prevention, detection and treatment of diseases.
The initiative – which is a collaboration between the private and public sectors, including the National Health Service – will use health-related data from over five million volunteers. It aims to better understand the leading causes of death and serious illness in the UK, including dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and strokes.
“We’re delighted that Microsoft will be working with us as a key technology partner and providing our cloud services,” said Andrew Roddam, chief executive of Our Future Health. “This will be an integral part of Our Future Health, underpinning so many important systems that are essential to the running of the programme and ultimately helping to create one of the most detailed pictures we’ve ever had of people’s health.”
Volunteers will complete questionnaires about their health and lifestyles and provide blood samples which researchers will study for DNA information and biomarkers. The programme will use the cloud platform to process this health data to predict with better accuracy who is at higher risk of diseases and would benefit from faster access to screening and prevention interventions, and provide more personalised treatments to reduce disease risk.
“Healthcare teams across the world trust the Microsoft Cloud to deliver better experiences, insights and care, while managing and protecting health and personal data,” said Jacob West, managing director of healthcare and life sciences at Microsoft UK. “Microsoft is proud to support Our Future Health’s work, which will provide research teams with a unique view into some of the most common and life-changing diseases that people face.”