Global initiative to transform arthritis research and care

Big data and AI are being used to improve care for arthritis.

Southampton researchers are part of a new international partnership, known as PROBE.

This aims to revolutionise the way osteoarthritis is understood, diagnosed and treated.

Professor Nicholas Harvey, Dr Leo Westbury and Dr Elizabeth Curtis are involved in the major new initiative.

All three are researchers at Southampton’s MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre (LEC). They are also part of the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre (BRC).

Large-scale collaboration

PROBE is a five-year initiative. It launched in December 2025.

The partnership is funded by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking.

Southampton is one of 38 partners in the collaboration. It brings together academia, industry, patient organisations, regulatory bodies and healthcare professionals.

Together, they will develop patient-centred osteoarthritis endpoints and advanced AI-driven predictive models. The also aim to develop next-generation clinical trial designs.

They will achieve this using a federated database infrastructure. This will ensure sensitive health data remains local, while enabling large-scale analyses. It will cover over 70 million people from international cohorts and registries.

Harnessing big data and AI

The UK work will deepen existing musculoskeletal research collaborations. This includes between NIHR BRCs in Southampton, Leeds and Oxford.

Professor Harvey, who is Director Designate of the NIHR Southampton BRC, said:

“We are delighted to be part of this global initiative. PROBE represents a unique opportunity to harness big data and cutting-edge AI technologies to transform osteoarthritis research and care. This will ultimately improve outcomes for millions of patients worldwide.”