Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust: Government against COVID-19 ^{Non-funding Support}

Entity: Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust

Description: The trust's Clinical Diagnostics teams are working closely with University of Exeter as partners of the global project 'COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium' 'COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium' is a collaboration between the NHS, Public Health England and other UK public health agencies, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge and other academic institutions.

1. Project
COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium
Research Group: Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit
Project Description: The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium aims to increase the current capacity for SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequencing in the UK. This sequencing data will be used to understand the epidemiology and spread of the virus, and to monitor and evaluate interventions for COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 genomic data will be integrated with NHS electronic health records and other existing genomic data to generate insights into susceptibility to COVID-19. From within the DPHPC, Professor John Danesh is a member of the COG-UK Steering Group, Dr Ewan Harrison will serve as the Scientific Project Manager and Dr Michael Chapman will lead the health informatics component.

Contributors:
Dr Stephen Michell, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Microbiology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Dr Ben Temperton, Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics, College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Dr Aaron Jeffries, Senior Research Fellow, University of Exeter Medical School
Professor David Studholme, Associate Professor in Bioinformatics, College of Life and Environmental Sciences
Dr Jane Masoli, Academic Geriatrician, Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust and University of Exeter Medical School

https://www.cogconsortium.uk/about/

2. Programme Title: Call for COVID-19 rapid response data science taskforce (DECOVID)
Summary: Most of what we currently know of COVID-19 comes from data about its outbreak in China and Italy, but there may be differences in presentation and course within the multi-ethnic communities of the UK which have not been described thus far. Within the UK, high level mapping is being captured by Public Health England, but there is a lack of in-depth and granular data capture. This in-depth data is needed to inform prognostic prediction tools, enable effective clinical care or model the ongoing and likely future impact of COVID-19.

DECOVID is an emerging research collaboration between The Alan Turing Institute, NHS Trusts, HDR UK and other academic partners. This collaboration aims to use near real-time health data as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds to allow researchers and clinicians to identify factors and generate insights that can lead to more effective clinical treatment strategies. DECOVID will be affiliated to PIONEER - the Health Data Research Hub for Acute Care. This is a rapid response call for teams of researchers as well as individual researchers to join collaboration in addressing these urgent questions. Teams will rapidly trial tested, robust and reproducible data science and machine learning methods on this new national data resource of COVID 19 data, to create a near real-time, human-in-the-loop analytics platform and information console to support acute care management and clinical decision making. DECOVID has been structured to be nationally scalable.