Two years of advancing personalised healthcare for children in collaboration with Roche

We are one of the most digitally advanced hospitals in Europe and have over 170 years of experience caring for children and young people with complex health conditions. We have a huge amount of experience and information that can help us to find new and better ways to diagnose and treat patients and run our hospital. Our partnership with Roche is helping us to do this by tackling data science challenges. This first-of-a-kind collaboration also aims to develop a better understanding of how the NHS and pharmaceutical companies can work together.

GOSH has a long history of working in collaboration with industry partners to help develop better treatments and therapies, faster. We also have a track record of innovating with data to improve healthcare through our Data Research, Innovation and Virtual Environments Unit (GOSH DRIVE). We are closely connected with other UK and international children’s hospitals, so the work we do not only benefits children at GOSH but across the world.

As we mark the milestone of our second year working together, we took some time to reflect on the incredible progress we have made so far.

1. Launch of the Clinical Intelligence Unit (CIU): The CIU was established to partner with clinical and operational teams to understand their needs, identify inefficiencies and build digital tools that can support their roles.
2. Futureproofing our infrastructure: We have developed and implemented a digital space to test and develop AI tools, reducing processing time from days to hours.
3. Onboarding of Innovation Officers: We onboarded 10 Innovation Officers to bridge the gap between data teams at DRIVE and clinical and operational experts in the hospital.
4. Developed a process that can unpick valuable genomic information: Involving multiple teams and a range of expertise, we have developed a multi-stage process that uses natural language processing (a type of AI) and data engineering, to unpick information from genomic reports, which could enhance research into diseases and support clinical decision making.

“2 years ago, we embarked on our journey with Roche with the ambition of harnessing the power of data to provide more personalised care for our patients. After a lot of hard work and collaboration, it’s really exciting that we are now starting to deliver outputs with real-world benefits. I want to thank every individual team member involved in this collaboration, without their continued hard work and expertise none of this would be possible”

Professor Neil Sebire, Chief Research Information Officer, GOSH

As we move into the third year of our partnership, we will consider what we have learnt so far, so that we can continue to progress towards our goal of bringing more personalised care to our patients.

• Flexibility: We have learnt that it is important to be willing to adapt. We will continue to review our plans and make changes when needed, keeping the needs of our patients, families and staff as our priority at all times.
• Refining our focus: Now that we have built a good basis and understanding our capabilities, we will focus on developing our skills within a clinical theme. Once we have achieved this, we will apply our learnings across other clinical areas, to benefit as many patients as possible.
• Celebrating our team: The success of the partnership is only possible thanks to the hard work and skill of the team behind it. By recognising and celebrating our team we can highlight the importance of data science, engineering and analysis expertise in harnessing-the-power-of-data at GOSH and across the NHS.

"Working in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital's DRIVE team is an on-going privilege for Roche. Like GOSH, we are committed to doing everything we can to ensure patients have the best possible experience and outcomes. Through our collaboration, we can now evidence the benefits and barriers of how the NHS and pharma can work together to develop technologies that optimise the use of data already collected within the NHS, to deploy real world applications that deliver benefit to patients and health systems."

Dr Rebecca Pope (she/her), UK Digital & Data Science Innovation Lead, Roche UK

All projects undertaken within the partnership are conducted within GOSH’s secure digital research infrastructure. No data leaves the GOSH DRIVE infrastructure and Roche do not have access to any personal information.

You can find out more about the details of the collaboration in our initial announcement here or in the video below.