Our Future Health played a leading role at this year’s Festival of Genomics & Biodata. 

The annual event took place at the ExCel Centre in London on January 28^th and 29^th. It’s the UK’s largest life sciences event, offering the scientific community a chance to get together and discuss the next big leaps in healthcare and research. 

Across two days, Our Future Health’s leaders gave keynote speeches and took part in roundtable discussions. We also hosted a busy conference stand, where we met conference attendees and told them about the work Our Future Health is doing. 

The festival was a chance for us to speak with health researchers and policy makers about our new Clinical Research Recruitment Service. The service is designed to enable faster and more efficient recruitment into clinical trials and observational studies. 

We have a cohort of over 2.5 million participants who have consented to be invited to take part in additional research. By applying to use our Clinical Research Recruitment Service, researchers can work with us to send targeted invitations to potential participants based on health-related information. This includes phenotype, genotype, demographics and location data.  

Powering clinical trials in the UK

On the conference’s second day, our Chief Executive, Dr Raghib Ali OBE, gave a keynote speech about the future of clinical trials in the UK. The keynote was introduced by a recorded video from Lord Vallance, the Minister of State for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear. 

In his speech, Raghib highlighted the need for the UK to enable more clinical trials, for multiple reasons. These include the benefit to patient outcomes, the benefit to trial participants, and the benefit to the UK economy. 

He told conference attendees that our Clinical Research Recruitment Service can help power that transformation, by helping researchers to find the people they need for their trials or studies. 

Raghib’s address was followed by a roundtable discussion on genomics, strategy, and the next decade of UK life sciences.  

The theme of preventative healthcare played a central role – and was picked up later in the day by a further roundtable that featured Dr Cosima Gretton, our Interim Chief Product Officer. 

Cosima contributed to a discussion on how we can build a prevention-driven health system in the UK. She highlighted the evidence base Our Future Health can provide, so we can learn how to better identify and help people at risk of disease in the future. 

Spreading the word

Across the two days, Our Future Health was also represented on stage by Fiona Maleady-Crowe, our Chief Compliance and Integrity Officer, and Adam Steventon, our Interim Chief Data Officer. 

Adam spoke about our data set and the opportunities it opens for health researchers to conduct observational studies. 

Fiona discussed how we maintain our strict ethical governance, and the extensive steps we take to ensure the public and our participants are involved in the design of our programme.  

She shared our work on deliberative dialogues with our participants and the public as one example. We commissioned these early in the development of our Clinical Research Recruitment Service, to help us understand how our participants would want to receive invitations to new research. 

Meanwhile, at our conference stand, we met a range of people across the two days who wanted to know more about Our Future Health. The conference meant we could speak in-depth with members of the life science community and explore how Our Future Health can help shape the next big leaps forward in healthcare and research.  

Want to speak to us directly about how Our Future Health can power your research? Email richard.coupe@ourfuturehealth.org.uk or visit research.ourfuturehealth.org.uk to find out more