Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company, has joined Paddington Life Sciences Partners in 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. We speak to Dr Suki Balendra, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Paddington Life Sciences, about the impact of this partnership.
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.
Dr Balendra said: “Paddington Life Sciences partnered with Snowflake to help overcome challenges, such as the fragmentation of health data, which necessitated a secure and centralised platform to integrate and manage diverse datasets from NHS Trusts and other sources, for a population of 2.4 million in North West London. Collaboration among NHS, industry and academic stakeholders was hindered by the lack of seamless and secure data-sharing capabilities, which was crucial in better understanding and tackling social value and reducing health disparities.
“Snowflake’s platform addressed this issue by enabling all parties to work on a unified, governed dataset thanks to its centralised, scalable and governed platform. Furthermore, Snowflake delivered a robust data environment through delivering the iCARE Secure Data Environment and Digital Collaboration Space infrastructure, which is essential in supporting research and innovation, including clinical trials and advanced analytics.
“Finally, the need for a scalable, interoperable digital research framework aligned with the NHS’s long-term strategy. This made Snowflake an ideal partner, enabling Paddington Life Sciences to meet these challenges while improving health outcomes and fostering equity in the region.”
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.
Snowflake’s secure data sharing capabilities include 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.
“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 North West London ICS,” said Dr Balendra.
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 well-being, and not just highlight problems across diverse communities.
“The NHS, academia, community-serving organisations, and the Life Sciences industry struggle to establish long-lasting meaningful partnerships,” points out Dr Balendra. “Engagement and collaboration between stakeholders, including community, NHS and pharmaceutical industry partners, enables trust and fosters an ecosystem that co-creates strategies and solutions together. Leveraging partnerships within Paddington Life Sciences between NHS, community, tech partners such as Snowflake, and the wider industry presents a tremendous opportunity to cultivate and sustain clinical trial diversity.”
