A Durham University Knowledge Transfer Partnership has helped Evergreen Life to explore how machine learning can improve outcomes for patients who are receiving cancer treatment.
The partnership has allowed the company to make its first crucial steps towards harnessing the power of clinical data to enhance outpatient follow-up by improving the identification and treatment of side effects.
Having proven the potential of the opportunity, Evergreen has now secured a further £1.2million in grants from Innovate UK to carry out further research required to build new tools that can predict patient responses to treatments and inform medical decisions.
This KTP helped us to make our first, tentative steps in an area where little research currently exists. It allowed us to embark on blue sky thinking, to push the boundaries of what is known and explore what benefits we can gain from understanding the data of our medical experiences and personal background.
Evergreen Life has revolutionised patients’ access to their healthcare information and GP records with their handy app. Using the Evergreen Life app, patients can book appointments, order prescriptions, and get insights into how to be as healthy and happy as possible.
In building software that empowers the patient to curate their own personal health record, the company has somewhere in the region of 1,000,000 records at its fingertips where the patient has consented for these to be used to improve medical research. These chart everything from a patient’s age and gender to diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.
The company recognised an opportunity to use machine learning to analyse this valuable bank of information. They hoped to be able to detect patterns in patient backgrounds and experiences so they could predict who is more at risk of the side effects of specific treatments in future.
They set themselves the challenge to predict kidney and liver damage in patients after chemotherapy and began by looking for anomalies in referral patterns which might suggest potential errors.
They theorised that if those predictions could be made, NHS services could then be designed to support those likely to suffer side effects – prioritising those who need intervention and minimising disruption to the lives of those who are not at risk.
The company identified the need for a computer scientist to support the project and turned to Durham University for expertise. A research associate was matched with the company to provide a bridge between the academic and commercial worlds that the KTP straddled.
The innovative nature of the project raised a number of ethical and moral dilemmas around the use of clinical data, which demanded careful consideration before any research could begin.
The team pooled its expertise to develop a model to address these issues which involves seeking permission from patients to share their anonymised data to be used responsibly to further medical science.
Though these barriers slowed the initial progress of the project, the development of this robust and ethical model of data sharing has ultimately strengthened Evergreen’s proposition.
The KTP has informed the team’s next steps – paving the way to future funding for research and the release of crucial data from healthcare providers.
This remains an active area of research for Evergreen and an exciting area of future development.
The company has joined up the work of the KTP with a second Durham University PhD researcher and together the project has secured £1.2million in further grants from Innovate UK as well as a pipeline of more research and income.
Evergreen can now confidently secure the income needed to build tools for use in the healthcare sector to lead to better clinical decisions, better patient outcomes and reduced costs.
"This KTP helped us to make our first, tentative steps in an area where little research currently exists. It allowed us to embark on blue sky thinking, to push the boundaries of what is known and explore what benefits we can gain from understanding the data of our medical experiences and personal background.
We underestimated the scale of the challenge and the barriers that we’d need to address but in confronting these, we’ve strengthened our proposition. We’ve proven that it is achievable and we’ve defined the next steps. Ultimately, this has given us the confidence to secure new research grants and build new healthcare tools. We wouldn’t have got to this point without the KTP."
Chris Kennelly, Director of Health Innovation
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