King's Health Partners wins Technology Strategy Board Funding
Posted on 13/06/2011
King’s College London, part of King’s Health Partners, in an IDBS-led collaborative partnership with Quantix and the University of Manchester have been awarded funding from the Technology Strategy Board worth £1.5m to the consortium.
The Technology Strategy Board funding with additional £1.5m committed by the commercial partners, will support the development of an innovative information technology platform, Acropolis, that will provide the essential information technology and informatics infrastructure to support stratified medicine research and cross-organisational collaboration. The platform will enable collaborating organisations to store and utilise their own data securely on the platform, as well as allowing organisations to work collaboratively on shared and common data from within and external to the platform. This will be the first time that such a comprehensive information pool will be available to doctors and scientists, supporting vital research into developing personalised medicines.
King’s Health Partners, with the support of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, have invested significantly over the past three years in designing and procuring a platform (Oncology Research Information System) from IDBS, that can bring together consented patient data from across Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts and research data from Kings College London. The Acropolis platform builds on the significant achievements of the Oncology Research Information System, in itself a capability that is unparalleled.
Professor Peter Parker, Head of Cancer Studies at Kings College London, and sponsor of the Kings Health Partners initiative said: “This innovative platform will put translational research activities onto another level, providing unprecedented opportunities to collaborate between organisations,and ultimately leading to improved treatments across global healthcare systems”.
“IDBS are delighted to be working with KHP, the Technology Strategy Board and our other partners to deliver a new infrastructure for stratified medicine in the UK,” said Neil Kipling, founder and CEO of IDBS. “Acropolis will enable collaboration between medical research and industry, which is essential to improving patient outcomes in cancer and other disease areas.”
Professor Robert Lechler, Executive Director, King’s Health Partners said: “One of the central goals of King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre is to integrate research more effectively with clinical care. The Technology Strategy Board funding will allow us to do just that and brings an exciting opportunity for us to advance personalised medicine.”
Oliver Smith, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Guy's and St Thomas' Charity, said: "We are delighted that the Charity's investment of £1.43m in the ORIS database has underpinned this wider project which promises to significantly enhance research potential and ultimately, improved care for patients across the King's Health Partner hospitals. The Charity has identified the creation of integrated world-class cancer care and services as one of its priorities and the success of the Technology Strategy Board bid enables a beacon project for cancer services within the King's Health Partnership."
For more information please contact Sarah Crack, Communications Manager, King’s Health Partners 020 7188 4058 / sarah.crack@kcl.ac.uk
Notes to editors
• The Acropolis platform will consist of an IDBS software and data management stack hosted on a secure Quantix server.
• The total cost of the research and development project is £3 million, half funded by the Technology Strategy Board and half by the commercial partners.
• The consortium members are IDBS (lead partner), a commercial organisation delivering innovative life sciences software, Quantix, a service organisation that provides hosted computer infrastructure environments, Manchester As a participative partner Kings College London will receive £350k in supportive funds to cover its costs as a member of the consortium.
King’s Health Partners
King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) is a pioneering collaboration between King’s College London, and Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts.
King’s Health Partners is one of only five AHSCs in the UK and brings together an unrivalled range and depth of clinical and research expertise, spanning both physical and mental health. Our combined strengths will drive improvements in care for patients, allowing them to benefit from breakthroughs in medical science and receive leading edge treatment at the earliest possible opportunity.
About IDBS
IDBS is a global provider of innovative enterprise data management, analytics and modeling solutions. The company’s uniquely sophisticated platform technologies are used by more than 200 pharmaceutical companies, major healthcare providers, global leaders in academic study, and high tech companies to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve the productivity of industrial R&D and clinical research. IDBS is clearly differentiated by its unique combination of award-winning enterprise technologies and domain knowledge in R&D.
IDBS’ solutions help scientists, hospitals and R&D businesses produce the world’s newest therapeutics, diagnostics and personalized treatments, high-tech materials and consumer products, faster, cleaner engines and fuels, breakthroughs in productive agriculture, healthy, safer food products, and high tech materials and products.
Founded in 1989 and privately held, IDBS is headquartered in Guildford, UK with a direct sales and support presence worldwide. IDBS is a Profit Track 100 company and the recipient of multiple awards including the Frost and Sullivan ‘Enabling Technology’ Award in R&D data management for 2010. Further information can be found at
www.idbs.com, or follow us on Twitter
@IDBSsoftware
About the Technology Strategy Board
The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led government body which works to create economic growth by ensuring that the UK is a global leader in innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit
www.innovateuk.org.