Today a £10 million programme to identify individual cancer risk was announced in which Professor Ashley Akbari, ADR Wales co-lead for the Major Societal Challenges and Social Care research themes, is a co-applicant and co-lead of the new programme’s data lab.
The Cancer Data-Driven Detection programme, or CD3, is funded by the Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
As part of the programme, ADR UK is also providing funding to support linking administrative and health data to understand the cancer incidence in Wales. By using several sources of data, the project will identify patterns and inequalities in cancer occurrence and screening. This will allow doctors better ways of predicting cancer risk. The funding will support the CD3 researchers to access and use the SAIL Databank.
Professor Ashley Akbari, co-applicant and CD3 Data Lab co-lead, said “This exciting and important programme will look to harness the potential of population-scale linked data across the UK, integrating data from a diverse range of sources such as electronic health records (EHRs), administrative records, and other multi-modal data sources. Utilising these data, the CD3 data lab team will drive the development of reproducible data-driven intelligence across the UK to enable the CD3 programme and collaboration. Building upon our expertise at Swansea University from the SAIL Databank and SeRP, we cannot wait to start working further across this CD3 collaboration and associated networks to drive impactful research which will improve people’s lives and the services they use.”