Drayson Health, the healthcare technology company, announced the appointment of Professor David Clifton as Research Director in a joint appointment with the University of Oxford.
Professor Clifton, an Associate Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, brings his expertise in big data machine learning applications in healthcare to Drayson Health.
Lord Drayson, CEO of Drayson Health, said: “Professor Clifton brings to Drayson Health world-class expertise on the application of machine learning to clinical practice. He will be an integral member of the Drayson Health team and a strong link to Oxford, ensuring that the digital innovations born out of Oxford’s world-class research in AI get to benefit patients as quickly as possible.”
The appointment will accelerate the application of the University of Oxford’s world-leading research in clinically led applications of machine learning to the development of novel healthcare technologies for deployment by Drayson Health within the UK National Health Service (NHS) and internationally.
Professor Clifton leads the Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Laboratory located in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) at the University of Oxford with a second site at the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research in Suzhou, China.
Drayson Health, also located at the University of Oxford at the Big Data Institute, entered into a strategic research collaboration partnership in July 2017 with the University of Oxford, Oxford University Innovation and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to develop digital health innovations.
The University of Oxford has exclusively licensed Professor Clifton’s patents in the field of healthcare algorithms to the company and he is leading research programmes at the University’s CHI Laboratory using deep learning and other techniques to analyse anonymised clinical data for the purpose of generating real-world evidence on health outcomes and discovery research.
Professor Clifton said: “Healthcare systems around the world have collected vast amounts of data which could hold the key to new scientific discoveries. Sensitivities understandably exist around moving and using healthcare data, however part of the attraction for me joining Drayson Health is the framework it has in place to ensure that discovery and applied research can be carried out ethically, responsibly and within the right regulatory framework – this is essential.”
“The first ever system based on machine learning that received FDA approval was developed by us at Oxford and so we feel confident we have the strongest partnerships at Drayson Health to achieve our goal."
"Our unique partnership with Oxford University enables us to undertake research using real world evidence from large datasets of anonymised patient data. The potential to deliver innovative digital therapeutics and fresh insights into managing modern disease has never been greater.”
Drayson Health is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Drayson Technologies and is based in the Big Data Institute (BDI) at the University of Oxford.
