UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced the investment of £2 million from its Strategic Priorities Fund in a data hub on chronic pain research.
Named Alleviate – The APDP Pain Research Data Hub, it will be part of a broader £24 million initiative to establish an Advanced Pain Discovery Platform to share new knowledge on biological, psychological and social mechanisms that contribute to pain.
Work on the hub will be led by Professor Emily Jefferson of the University of Dundee and supported by UKRI, Versus Arthritis and Health Data Research UK.
This will involve using open source software and hybrid cloud infrastructure, supported by Amazon Web Services, for the analysis of multi-modal data using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
It will aim to bring together and improve existing datasets for researchers into chronic pain, maximise the research potential of all data and results from ADPD investments, and provide details of new and improved treatments for various pain conditions.
One of the priorities is to integrate the datasets it produces with the Health Data Research Gateway.
This is intended to make it a key resource for researchers from the UK and overseas, bringing together research from different sources.
“This will ensure a world class health and research pain data infrastructure and services and drive multi-disciplinary collaboration in pain research,” UKRI said.
The broad programme will also involve a series of research projects on subjects such as neuropathic pain and visceral diseases.
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