Health Insurance: Cancer Research give funding for four research centres

Cancer research UK has been given a £19 million grant so that it can develop four new centres.

The funding, which comes from the government and charitable organisations, will see research centres of excellence set up in London, Manchester, Dundee and Swansea.

Each of the centres will be staffed with researchers whose duty it will be to analyse UK health data and find ways in which patient care for cancer sufferers can be improved in both the NHS and in private health care.

A focus will also be put on preventing other conditions such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

Information from health records and other forms of research will be linked so that researchers can look for ways in which to find suitable treatments, improve drug safety and assess risks to public health.

A partnership with the Medical Research Council has been formed as part of the scheme and it is hoped that this will encourage further collaborations between British and international health researchers.

Dr Fiona Reddington, Cancer Research UK's head of clinical and population research funding, said: "We are delighted to be working in partnership to support these Centres of Excellence in e-Health.

“This is an exciting time for e-Health research as linking data becomes an increasingly important and routine way in which science is undertaken.

"The more we learn about cancer the more its complexity is revealed and it is increasingly clear that further progress depends significantly on sharing and integrating the vast amounts of data being generated.”

She added that the centres will enable the development of a new generation of research specialists, who will be able to undertake “groundbreaking” studies in ways not “previously possible”.

Sir John Savill, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, described the scheme as a watershed moment for data research.