Digital health and data science bring together technology, healthcare, and data analytics to create powerful tools for improving health. We can track health trends, personalise treatments, and work with patients to make better care decisions.

Despite the promise of improved health outcomes, enhanced patient experience, and reduced healthcare costs, digital health and data science innovations are often delayed or obstructed by barriers, such as vast translational gaps between early research and clinical care, lack of integrated data across physical and mental health services, or limited digital healthcare knowledge in the workforce. 

  • Scaling healthcare innovations is a challenge, with most failing to reach implementation;
  • The use of healthcare innovations in practice is hindered by limited support for leaders to implement technologies at scale;
  • A significant digital health and data science knowledge gap exists in healthcare professionals.

Our vision

We will accelerate the advancement and clinical adoption of digital health technologies to ensure more people and our healthcare system benefit from innovations that improve health.

Patients and communities

Improve and integrate our data systems to drive innovations in digital health and data science that will benefit patients faster.

For example we will:

  • Link Epic and LUCI electronic patient data platforms together to enable the use of high-quality, multimodal data for research, validation, and real-world evaluation;
  • Unlock and connect south east London's health data records, such as imaging, genomics, and population health data, to drive research and innovation.
Staff and students

Ensure digital health solutions in data science, AI, and innovative technologies are developed and adopted safely and shared with people at scale, by building capacity across the work and care force.

For example we will:

  • Enhance digital skills through the KHP Digital Health Academy, providing tailored training in data science, AI, and digital health tools for staff across clinical and research roles, enabling the confident adoption of innovation at scale;
  • Promote equity through inclusive outreach programmes such as the Health Data Research UK Black Data Scientists & Engineers initiative.
Partners and the wider health economy

Connect academic, healthcare, and industry professionals to expand our unique MedTech innovation ecosystem and develop and deploy digital health technologies that will transform mental and physical health.

For example we will:

  • Accelerate innovation through the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, supporting delivery at every stage – from ideation to validation to commercialisation;
  • Promote the safe and responsible use of AI in healthcare by implementing frameworks and governance models for example through our critical role in Responsible Ai UK.

Impact in action

The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, led by King’s College London and based at St Thomas’ Hospital, brings academic, NHS, and industry partners together. Teams are examining how AI can be used to deliver better care while improving finances for the NHS and health and care systems. A network of professionals across KHP, through the Responsible AI UK programme, are also working to ensure AI is used safely and with care, while responding to the needs of our society.

Led by researchers and clinicians across the partnership and beyond, a powerful AI platform is transforming cancer care by refining decades of NHS cancer data and creating an unprecedented 360-degree profile of each patient. This technology is empowering researchers, developers, and innovators to responsibly and ethically shape the future of personalised medicine.

The KHP Digital Health Hub, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is a multi-disciplinary resource supporting training, co-design, and translation of digital health and clinical data science technologies across King’s Health Partners. Through the Digital Health Academy, some of our courses include the Innovation Scholars Programme, Co-Design for Digital Health, and Value Driven Innovation.

The electronic patient record system named Epic was launched jointly by partners Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts. Now rolled out across a number of hospitals, Epic replaced a number of historic IT systems and paper records that were previously in use. Use of Epic, combined with academic expertise, platforms, and data linkage, with support from the Centre for Translational Informatics, will transform person-centred care.

Epilepsy is a disabling brain disorder affecting around 600,000 people in the UK. A team of researchers across King's College London and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust are testing a device that measures electrical activity in the brain. The device is implanted between the skull and the skin under local anaesthetic, recording brain wave activity for months in the comfort of home. Outside of easing hospital pressures, these devices could be used to reduce harm or uncertainty of living with epilepsy, by monitoring disease more accurately, alerting people or caregivers that a seizure is occurring, or even predicting when a
seizure might occur in the future. 

Learn more about our other strategic priorities