Sensyne Health signs new NHS research agreement

Clinical AI company Sensyne Health has signed a five-year strategic research agreement (SRA) with Milton Keynes University Hospital Foundation Trust (MKUH).

The agreement will allow for the ethical application of clinical AI research to improve patient care and accelerate research into new medicines.

According to Sensyne, MKUH will receive shares in the company representing 1.1% of the existing issued share capital of Sensyne. This brings the total share ownership held by NHS Trusts in Sensyne to 10.86%.

In addition, MKUH will receive an investment of up to £250,000 per year from Sensyne, over the five-year term of the contract for specific investments in information technology to enable the curation and analysis of data under the agreement.

MKUH will also receive royalty on revenues generated by Sensyne from the research undertaken, with the financial return MKUH receives set to be reinvested back into the NHS to fund patient care.

The dataset at MKUH covers 650,000 unique patient records, with 55,000 annual hospital admissions from a patient population of approximately 350,000 patients. The new MKUH agreement brings the combined total of anonymised data available for analysis by Sensyne to 4.5 million patients.

In addition to its agreement with MKUH, Sensyne has SRAs in place with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Chelsea & Westminster Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust and Wye Valley and George Eliot NHS Trusts.

“We are delighted to be working with Milton Keynes in using anonymised patient data to improve patient care and accelerate the development of new medicines.  SRAs are a fundamental part of Sensyne’s unique model - giving NHS Trusts equity, funding and the ability to share in revenues,” said Lord Paul Drayson, chief executive officer of Sensyne Health.

“Growing our access to anonymised patient data is key to our strategy.  This new non-exclusive SRA moves us closer to our target of over 5 million unique patient records in the current financial year,” he added.