The DATAMIND platform is a nation-wide mental health data research hub that will transform mental health research.
The UK has some of the richest health data in the world. The DATAMIND hub will maximise the value of mental health data assets and enable coordinated research. It will safely and securely bring together anonymised data from diverse sources including health records, schools and administrative data, charities, research trials, genomics, longitudinal studies, and cohort data.
This data will be made discoverable through the UK Health Data Research Innovation Gateway so that researchers can find and learn about datasets and apply to use them to answer complex questions about mental health at a population level.
Involving the public, patients, and people with lived experience of mental health problems is a critical part of the DATAMIND hub and is embedded throughout the hub’s activities. This insight will ensure that the Hub is driven by the need of the population and will inform the safe and responsible use of mental health data.
DATAMIND is co-funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Health Data Research (HDR) UK.
The DATAMIND hub infrastructure will be located at four lead sites covering the UK’s nations. The hub will index and curate data from participating organisations enabling research and innovation that has large-scale impact.
The hub will be continually catalog relevant data from around the UK including information from gene studies, novel data and volunteer cohorts and trials.
Collaboration is at the core of the Hub as DATAMIND will work with stakeholders including policy makers, academics, industry, NHS, third sector, as well as patients, people with lived experience, and the public.
Training and professional development across multidisciplinary backgrounds is critical to support mental health data science researchers. The hub will join forces with MQ mental health research charity to build capacity of the mental health data science workforce and advocate for integration across the mental health and data science community.
The Hub will support high quality research and cutting-edge innovation that will improve the lives of people living with mental health illness and distress in the UK.
Collaboration across disciplines and stakeholders will drive innovation and help build long lasting partnerships so that research can reach its full potential for impact.
By making data more easily discoverable, trends in mental health can be identified quicker, meaning practitioners, academics and policy makers can all work with real-time information.
By embedding patients and the public from the very start of this project, DATAMIND will continue to uplift the voices of people who are most impacted by mental health conditions.
Ann John: Principal Investigator and Co-Director of DATAMIND, Health Data Research Hub for Mental Health. Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Swansea University.
Rob Stewart: Co-Director of DATAMIND, Health Data Research Hub for Mental Health, and Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Clinical Informatics at King’s College London
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