Data, Health and Society

You can find out more about our team here.

We are using artificial intelligence (AI) and insights into health data to support healthcare decision making.

We aim to create a learning healthcare system, providing data insights that can be used by healthcare professionals to improve the health and resilience of individuals and populations. We investigate how technology impacts personal and society’s health, and how people impact the technology.

Our projects allow us to realise the major health and social care potential that AI can deliver, in a scalable, iterative, responsive and accountable manner.

What we are tackling – Research Questions

Developing trust and trustworthiness

How can we build trust and ensure the trustworthiness of our systems through partnerships with citizens?

Using artificial intelligence to connect people and data

How can we cross boundaries and use AI to connect people and data throughout life?

Predicting and preventing disease

How can we use data science to integrate multiple data sources to predict, categorise and prevent disease?

Our impact

Our research is building a learning health system using trusted, trustworthy data. We are addressing the challenges of inaccessible data, privacy concerns, data silos and technical limitations. In recent years, we have grown our capacity and delivered benefit through over 80 data science projects.

Since 2016, our Ethical Legal Social Aspects (ELSA) Laboratory has led to co-authorship of national professional guidelines that are now used by NHS genomic medicine services. We have contributed to a national review of digital healthcare and given evidence in the High Court on consent in medical data. Read more
Southampton expertise co-authored the Chief Medical Officer’s Generation Genome annual report. We have also presented to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, with our research extensively cited in their direct-to-consumer testing report.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a limiting, sometimes debilitating and even life-threatening, condition. Our research has linked symptoms to genetic changes, advancing knowledge and individuals’ care. Read more
In 2020, we pinpointed specific DNA changes in over seven percent of Crohn’s disease patients. We also identified a tenfold higher risk of needing intestinal surgery. This allowed patients and their clinical teams to better track and manage symptoms.
To aid wider clinical awareness and use of genetics we launched an online resource, the Primer in Genomic Medicine

ELSA (Ethical Legal Social Aspects) Laboratory

As we collect ever more health data from more sources, giving your consent for all possible outcomes becomes harder. Our research has shown both the problems with relying solely on one-off consent, and a way forward using a broader approach. Read more