Ensono developed the secure cloud-based infrastructure for PIONEER hub, in collaboration with Microsoft, HDR UK, the University of Birmingham and UHB
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. (Credit: Tony Hisgett/Wikipedia.)
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) has selected US-based IT service management company Ensono to design, create and manage its health data research hub for acute care, dubbed PIONEER.
Ensono has developed the secure cloud-based infrastructure for the first data research hub, by working together with Microsoft, HDR UK, the University of Birmingham and UHB.
The data research hub would link data from different services across the West Midlands, facilitating the tracing of an individual’s acute care journey across healthcare providers.
University of Birmingham acute and respiratory medicine professor Elizabeth Sapey said: “110 million people per year seek acute care help, and the costs are huge: £17 billion per year. But despite this huge burden and cost, acute care has seen less healthcare innovation than any other area of healthcare.
“We hope that by bringing together this data from different providers across the country, we can offer innovation that’s never been seen before to really improve patients’ lives.”
PIONEER is the technology collaboration between Ensono and Microsoft, which works on Microsoft Azure, and provides UHB with a cost-effective secure cloud environment.
Benefits of PIONEER hub
The platform collects and curates acute care data, including primary, secondary, social care, and ambulance data, to deliver new ways of caring for acutely ill patients.
PIONEER is said to allow the healthcare teams to better understand the individual patient journey by providing a complete picture of data from every interaction of a patient.
The hub aims to help UHB build an effective healthcare system, that provides clinical teams with access to accurate, real-time acute hospital data for capacity planning and service.
Furthermore, PIONEER hub will help identify critical triggers and bottlenecks where healthcare needs to be improved and adjusted, supporting earlier diagnosis, new treatments and monitoring systems.
Microsoft UK healthcare senior director Laura Robinson said: “Microsoft’s cloud, Azure, is already helping many public and private sector organisations to deliver services more effectively and meet the evolving needs of citizens.
“Azure’s security, 24/7 availability and advanced capabilities make it a strong choice for the healthcare sector, and we look forward to helping more NHS organisations use the cloud to transform ways of working.”