AIM4ALL
Project impact
A digital platform was developed to enable standardised data collection in the evaluation of new health care products
CAR T-cell therapy was chosen as an exemplar for its significant potential health and economic benefits
The AIM4ALL Proof of Concept aimed to enhance data collection for evaluating new healthcare products in Scotland, using CAR T-cell therapy as an example. The project was a partnership between DHI, Precision Medicine, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and was funded by Scottish Enterprise and Cell & Gene Catalyst UK.
The AIM4ALL Proof of Concept was established to demonstrate how quality data collection needed for the delivery and evaluation of new healthcare products could be improved within the current system in Scotland.
CAR T-cell therapy was selected as the exemplar of a treatment with high potential for early and enduring health and economic benefit.
This is a partnership project with DHI, Precision Medicine and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GGC) with funding from Scottish Enterprise and Cell & Gene Catalyst UK.
Summary
Partners
The Life Sciences Competitiveness Indicators 2022 indicate that the UK must increase the number of clinical trials in Scotland to improve health outcomes and economic investment. There are two key challenges to increasing clinical trials in Scotland; disparate data sets across the healthcare landscape, and protracted contract negotiations due to treatment manufacturers requiring high fees to cover development costs. Such data challenges are common across many jurisdictions, with governments and health providers having insufficient reliable data to demonstrate impact and hence assess affordability.
The AIM4ALL project in Scotland intended to demonstrate that an exemplar treatment journey dataset could be standardised, and that a suitable platform could ingest and manage data over the long term and serve this data securely to downstream consuming services. AIM4ALL has the potential to offer new and valuable health data resources to inform outcomes-based contracts for medicines, reducing risk and improving affordability of emerging treatments, while also extending Scotland’s health data research services, driving inward investment and further strengthening Scotland's international health research credentials.
Impact & value
Working closely with Consultant Haematologist Dr David Irvine and his supporting Data Managers at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (NHS GGC), the AIM4ALL PoC mapped and standardised the CAR T treatment and post-treatment journey into formal descriptions. We extended a test instance of the NHS Scotland Health Data Exchange (HDE) to create a new ‘AIM4ALL platform’ to ingest and manage the standardised CAR T data, and prepared a synthetic dataset for testing and demonstration.
A secure API was developed to serve the test data to a medicines contract management solution, demonstrating how standardised data can be used directly to inform data-driven contracts. The PoC also set out key elements of a future AIM4ALL service operating model. The project achieved its principal objectives in December 2023 and the conclusions were presented to positive reception at the Cross-Parliamentary Group on Life Sciences at Holyrood in February 2024.
Progress to date
Staff related to the project
Building on the Proof of Concept project, DHI is exploring with Scottish Government, NHS Scotland and industry partners a next stage project to establish a limited scale ‘Living Lab’ AIM4ALL digital service. The Living Lab would use de-identified data and a representational data-informed contract for a treatment product to refine and assess the AIM4ALL digital service in a safe, low-risk setting over a period of some twelve months. The ‘real world’ experience gained through the Living Lab would inform the technical, business and governance design for an operational AIM4ALL digital health data service as a significant new national resource.
The Living Lab would be a significant step forward in evaluating the solution sustainability and economic model, ultimately informing the business case for embedding and scaling the AIM4ALL digital service.
Next steps
