Researchers at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences' Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science have received two major awards from Wellcome: £7 million to support groundbreaking research into mental health treatment outcomes, and a £10 million investment in new techniques for secure access to NHS data for research.
The first award will, for the first time, enable researchers to analyse anonymised NHS Talking Therapies data alongside GP records, in a highly secure setting. The Talking Therapies service is a major part of the NHS, delivering NICE-recommended psychological therapy for depression and anxiety disorders to over 670,000 patients in England each year. The therapies include cognitive-behaviour therapy, counselling, and guided self-help. Uniquely, outcome data is collected from 98% of people who have a course of treatment.
Incorporating this data into the OpenSAFELY platform will help answer many vital questions about mental health treatment, including:
- How talking therapies affect long-term health outcomes
- Which approaches work best for specific conditions and patient groups
- The best way to deliver services
- The relationship between mental health treatments and physical health
The research will build on the success of OpenSAFELY, the secure analytics platform developed at Oxford during the COVID-19 pandemic. OpenSAFELY has been delivering whole population data analysis, using innovative new methods to protect patients’ privacy while allowing researchers to conduct their research. The platform's findings directly informed UK public health policy decisions during the pandemic, particularly regarding protection for vulnerable groups.
Building on the Bennett Institute's existing collaboration with NHS England, the project will analyse outcome data from millions of patients who have used NHS Talking Therapies services while maintaining strict privacy controls. No identifying patient information leaves NHS systems, as all analysis takes place within the secure OpenSAFELY environment. Researchers design and write their analysis using randomly generated fake “dummy data”. They then submit it for automatic remote execution on the real patient data. This means that they don’t need to interact directly with real patient records. As part of the mental health project, OpenSAFELY and NHS England will also explore new mechanisms for data linkage, where datasets are minimised before moving between NHS England controlled data centres.
Professor Ben Goldacre, Director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, based within the Nuffield department of Primary Care Health Sciences, who originally trained in psychiatry, said:
"This investment on mental health data will be transformative. Researchers will be able to systematically study which talking therapies work best for different people, using secure analysis of NHS GP data at unprecedented scale, for the first time. This has the potential to fundamentally change how we deliver mental health care to patients in the NHS. In addition, the £10m data infrastructure investment will allow us to drive better use of data across the whole research community. We are hugely grateful to Wellcome for making this possible."
Professor David Clark, one of the architects of NHS Talking Therapies programme and a clinical advisor to NHS England, said:
“This research infrastructure comes at a crucial time for overstretched mental health services. NHS Talking Therapy services have repeatedly demonstrated their value in transforming people’s lives. However, the large and uniquely complete dataset has been underutilized. Much can be learned about how to further improve services and help the wide range of people whose lives are held back by mental health difficulties. OpenSAFELY provides the capability to analyse outcomes at scale, while maintaining absolute patient privacy. OpenSAFELY's proven track record in handling sensitive health data makes it the ideal platform for this vital research. The insights generated will help us, the NHS, better understand what works for whom, ultimately enabling us to provide more effective, personalised mental health support to our patients.”
Tariq Khokhar, Head of Data for Science and Health at Wellcome, said:
“The Bennett Institute team has created a powerful platform that combines technical excellence with robust privacy protection, enabling hundreds of researchers to conduct vital health research. This latest initiative to allow researchers to conduct research into mental health treatments could lead to transformational discoveries in the field of mental health. It could enable researchers to find new ways to target and personalise treatments for individuals, enabling scientists to drive forward more effective interventions for those who need them most.”
Michael Chapman, Director of Data Access at NHS England, said:
“We’re pleased to be working with the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science to provide secure access to NHS data which could lead to significant improvements in mental health support in the years ahead.
“Tens of thousands of people receive support from the NHS’s talking therapies services for anxiety and depression every month, so insights about which services achieve the best results could help transform people’s lives – and providing access to the data using the OpenSafely secure data environment means we can protect patient confidentiality and ensure NHS data doesn’t leave NHS IT systems."
The £10 million data infrastructure funding will enable the Bennett Institute to expand OpenSAFELY's capabilities even further. Planned developments include new methods for connecting diverse health datasets and enhanced analytical tools for researchers; the team will also explore expanding the platform's successful approach to non-health data and international data. This work builds on OpenSAFELY's proven track record in supporting drug safety studies and health equity research.
Key Links:
OpenSafely: www.opensafely.org/
The Bennett Institute, at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care health Sciences