Digital Healthcare functions and services

The Data Protection Office at ICHT ensures GDPR compliance in all its activities. The DPO monitors internal compliance, informs and advises on your data protection obligations, provides advice regarding Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) and act as a contact point for data subjects and the Information Commissioner’s Office. The DPO can provide assistance and advice on data protection issues, privacy incidents and investigation, accessing personal data and exercise of data protection rights, access to patient data for research purposes, ensuring transparency and the right to be informed, updating information on the Information Asset Register. More information on the functions of DPO and contact information can be found here. 

Imperial Clinical Analytics, Research and Evaluation (iCARE) supports and runs the ICHT Secure Data Environment, which securely hosts large volumes of healthcare and biomedical data. iCARE hosts Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s (ICHT) patient data including access to unstructured data (text and imaging) and can be linked to other datasets including Whole Systems Integrated Care data. The iCARE team is based across Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London, enables and leads digital health projects in Imperial, across the Northwest London population and the wider national healthcare system. Information on data hosted on iCARE and applying for accessing data can be found here.  

Imperial Health Knowledge Bank offers patients the opportunity to take part in research 

The Imperial Health Knowledge Bank (IHKB) is a unique biomedical research resource that will provide every patient with an opportunity to take part in research and contribute to the advancement of medical science. 

IHKB aims to build a database of individuals, with and without health conditions, who are interested in taking part in future health research studies, allow us to access their health data and store biological samples for research. 

IHKB now holds information for over 111,000 ICHNT patients who have consented to part of the Knowledge Bank. Researchers can now apply to access IHKB. 

More information can be found here.  

The Imperial Trusted Research Environment (TRE) is a secure, cloud-based platform designed for data analysis and collaboration among researchers. Currently in its pilot testing phase, the TRE is fully supported by the Imperial Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Research Computing Services teams. The TRE provides a comprehensive suite of coding, analysis, and data management tools, offering both Windows and Linux virtual machines (VMs). It features scalable computing capabilities and collaborative workspaces, alongside safety measures like an airlock feature that prevents unauthorized data imports and exports within workspaces. Imperial TRE is certified under ISO 27001, ensuring the secure storage and processing of personally identifiable information, personal medical data, and commercially sensitive data. Additionally, cost reporting is available to assist projects in budgeting their use of TRE resources. More information on College TRE can be found here. 

The Joint Research Office (JRO) provides integrated support for researchers from the Faculty of Medicine and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Organised into specialist teams, JRO staff facilitate the management of research grants, contracts and EU projects in the Faculty of Medicine, and clinical studies in Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.  can help you prepare grant applications and requests for research-related contracts, with guidance on costings, submission procedures, preferred terms and in-kind contributions. More information on the JRO can be found here. 

Paddington Life Sciences, a life sciences cluster based around St Mary’s Hospital, aims to foster innovative partnership between the NHS, academia and industry to drive innovation in the NHS and generate economic as well as health and healthcare benefits. The partnership’s key focus areas are increasing access to healthcare and clinical research, skills and job creation, digital inclusion, improving care through data analytics and creating new space for life sciences businesses in Paddington. More information can be found here.

REDCap is a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. Imperial College London is registered as a REDCap partner with the REDCap consortium. Under the terms of this licence, a central instance of the software has been installed on ICT run College infrastructure which can support multiple concurrent projects. The software is provided for the purposes of non-commercial research only. The research activity must be led by an Imperial College CI. The request will first be reviewed by the RGIT and Faculty of Medicine GDPR teams to ensure that ethical and data protection approvals have been discussed and then a REDCap project workspace will be provisioned. More information on RedCAP and requesting RedCAP access can be found here.  

If you are looking to set up an instance under redcap in ICHT, please contact the data and assets committee. 

The Research Governance and Integrity Team (RGIT) exists to support the College and its researchers to meet the requirements of research regulatory governance and integrity, ensuring that Imperial fulfils the legal, ethical and scientific obligations of the healthcare research process. RGIT supports both NHS and non-NHS Healthcare research and human impact non-healthcare research across the College and NHS healthcare research at Imperial College Healthcare Trust. More information on RGIT can be found here.

The Imperial College Healthcare Tissue and Biobank (ICHTB) infrastructure enables Imperial researchers to collect, store and use human tissue appropriately under a single Human Tissue Authority (HTA) licence (#12275) and Ethics approval (Wales REC 3 22/WA/0214). Tissue Access Requests are submitted for approval to the ICHTB Application Review Panel. The ICHTB holds samples from patients with and without cancer; from all major specialities included neurology, cardiology, breast and endocrine, upper and lower gastrointestinal, urology, gynaecology, haematology, immunology and musculoskeletal. Sample types include frozen and FFPE tissue, blood and urine; amongst others. The ICHTB consists of a main surgical tissue bank of around 60,000 leftover surgical specimens; >500,000 subcollections of surgical and non-surgical samples held locally with researchers; and surgical specimens within the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust diagnostic histopathology archives. 
  
The ICHTB can provide additional medical and histopathology data by linking to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s Electronic Healthcare Record. This allows researchers to conduct more in-depth research, as they can select the patient cohorts for their research based on factors such as disease indication, genotype or treatment.

Email: tissuebank@imperial.ac.uk 
ICHTB Manager: Dr Leonie Powley, l.powley@imperial.ac.uk 

More information can be found here. 

Whole Systems Integrated Care Dashboards are a suite of tools available to clinicians and care professionals who are providing direct care to patients. The WSIC Dashboards provide a linked integrated summary of patient's health and social care which can be used to case find and case manage patients who require more targeted and proactive care and is governed by a legal document, the Whole Systems Integrated Care NWL Digital Information Agreement. More information regarding WSIC can be found here. 

The New Systems and Apps committee (NSAC) supports staff with a structured process for introducing new systems in the Trust, ensuring they are safe, meet patient safety and IG criteria and align with the trusts Digital Data and Technology Strategy while also provisioning resources and plans for implementation. NSAC ensures that trust does not have system divergence and replication of existing system functionality which can fragment the patient and staff experience while systems and introduce risk. 
  
The New Systems and Apps Committee reviews the following case types: 
Implementation of a new system (A new system is defined as an application that has no existing contract in place, is not on the asset register or has no data protection approval for its use in the organisation, this also includes software supporting medical devices.) 
Existing systems/solutions which require substantial changes to its design or architecture 
Systems which are not currently registered in the Information Asset Register 
Software associated with a medical device or software as a medical device, that is CE marked or MHRA approved   

The Data and Assets Steering Committee is a specialist oversight group constituting of subject matter experts from the various services and functions withing ICHT and Imperial such as the JRO, RGIT, DPO, C&I AG, New systems etc and performs the following functions: 
To provide oversight/ act as an escalation point for all initiatives requesting use of data and data assets, databases, AI projects/initiatives, new systems, commercial innovation, and non-standard research.   
To provide oversight for academic, commercial or third-sector organisations to access specific NHS data  
To ensure fair terms are agreed for the use of data and data assets, databases, AI projects/initiatives, new systems, commercial innovation and non-standard research including a comprehensive consideration of what constitutes ‘fair value’.  
To ensure that all research and non-research data partnership requests are considered in alignment with the relevant national AI and digital strategies, UK policy framework for health and social care research, relevant regulations (CTIMP, IVDD, Device studies), and the HRA/ethics rules and conditions and the Imperial and ICHT Joint digital strategy  
To oversee the development and implementation of research asset trust position framework to support projects aiming to create tissue banks, research databases and/or platforms requiring Trust data or samples, or research projects aiming to develop and validate AI, software, algorithms, machine learning or devices. 
To ensure projects are escalated further within the Trust if required.  
For more information on the Data and Assets Steering Committee contact imperial.dataandassets@nhs.net 

The Imperial College London NHS technology transfer team(Innovations) is a specialised team within the Imperial College Enterprise department, which specifically provides IP and commercialisation support to NHS staff. The Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has an established partnership with Imperial College London, to provide such specialised technology transfer services to entrepreneurial Trust staff. The team provides services such as: 
Innovation capture – This is through disclosures to Innovations or via meetings or emails 
Due diligence – Innovations conduct needs, market, IP and competitor analysis on projects 
Intellectual Property Rights (IP) – Innovations secure intellectual property protection on projects it takes forward, at their own cost. 
Raising finance – Innovations aid sourcing of finance and help writing grant applications 
Product development – Innovations work with the inventor(s) to develop their projects developed via third parties. Innovations aid project management and provide legal expertise. 
Commercial exit – Innovations commercialise the innovation via licensing or spinning out companies. 
Innovations training – Innovations provide training and awareness sessions in innovation and IP to ICHT staff. 

Read more here.