Milton Keynes Trust signs AI research agreement with Sensyne

Clinical artificial intelligence (AI) company Sensyne Health has signed a five-year deal with Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (MKUH) in a bid to improve patient care and accelerate research into new medicines.

The non-exclusive Strategic Research Agreement (SRA) will see Sensyne Health and MKUH exploring the ethical application of clinical AI utilising data from the Trust.

MKUH’s dataset covers 650,000 unique patient records whilst the Trust sees 55,000 annual hospital admissions from a patient population of around 350,000 people. The SRA with MKUH means that a combined total of 4.5 million pieces of anonymised patient data will be available for analysis by Sensyne Health.

All data supplied to Sensyne Health by MKUH will be anonymised beforehand with the data operating under an agreed Data Processing Protocol (“DPP”) under MKUH ethical oversight. Currently, patient data sits in a Datawarehouse which will facilitate data processing with Sensyne and enable immediate implementation.

More so, through the SRA, MKUH will receive shares representing 1.1% of the existing issued share capital of Sensyne Health, bringing the total share ownership held by NHS Trusts in Sensyne to 10.86%. The Trust will also receive an investment of up to £250,000 per year over the five-year term for specific investments in information technology to enable the curation and analysis of data under the SRA

Lastly, MKUH will receive a royalty on revenues that are generated by Sensyne from the research undertaken under the SRA. Any financial return the Trust receives from Sensyne will be reinvested back into the NHS to fund patient care. MKUH has entered into a lock-up agreement whereby it has agreed not to dispose of any shares for a period of two years from the date the shares are issued

Lord Paul Drayson, CEO of Sensyne Health, said: “We are delighted to be working with Milton Keynes in using anonymised patient data to improve patient care and accelerate the development of new medicines. SRAs are a fundamental part of Sensyne’s unique model - giving NHS Trusts equity, funding and the ability to share in revenues.  Growing our access to anonymised patient data is key to our strategy.  This new non-exclusive SRA moves us closer to our target of over 5 million unique patient records in the current financial year.”