(Sharecast News) - Clinical artificial intelligence (AI) company Sensyne Health has signed a five-year, non-exclusive strategic research agreement with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, it announced on Friday.
The AIM-traded firm said the deal would enable the "ethical application" of clinical AI research, by analysing de-identified patient records to carry out research.
It said the partnership would cover research across the trust's areas of disease expertise and specialism in cancer, cardiovascular disease and rare diseases.
Cancer research would be a key focus of the partnership, with Sensyne saying it would use its expertise to analyse cancer patient pathways to reduce patient waiting times and improve patient care.
Additionally, under the agreement, Sensyne and the NHS trust would focus on clinical decision tools to support patient care, by developing new AI-enabled software to help clinicians analyse complex data to improve clinical decision making.
They would also use AI to analyse retrospective clinical data, and generate synthetic control arms to support clinical trials more effectively, accelerating the process of drug development for patients.
Finally, the deal would allow for a focus on drug discovery, by helping to discover new medicines aimed at treating rare and common diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancers.
The company said the dataset covered three million unique patient records, with around one million patient contacts per year from a patient population of about five million people.
It said the new agreement took the number of Sensyne's strategic research deals with NHS Trusts and US health systems to 16, and brought the combined total of de-identified patient data directly accessible for medical research to 25.5 million patients, made up of 12.1million in the UK and 13.4 million in the United States.
"Sensyne is delighted to be working with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, a leading national centre for the treatment of rare or complex conditions and a university teaching hospital with a worldwide reputation," said Sensyne Health chief executive officer Paul Drayson.
"Cambridge University Hospitals is also recognised as a leader in the use of digital tools and health data to improve patient care and has built a large, high quality data set as a result."
Lord Drayson said the trust had "invested heavily" in its digital infrastructure and the curation of its data, meaning Sensyne could start work immediately.
"Together we aim to use the power of ethical AI to make a real difference in finding new and better ways to treat cancer and other complex diseases."
At 1416 GMT, shares in Sensyne Health were flat at 90p.