Aridhia's data science platform AnalytiXagility has been chosen to underpin a €6 million oral healthcare innovation project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme and the funding win demonstrates huge confidence in Aridhia's data analytics capability.
During the four-year project, known as ADVOCATE, the Edinburgh-based company will work with 10 partners spanning academia, healthcare and industry across six EU states, to deliver an innovative, evidence-based oral healthcare model which optimises oral health and wellbeing.
Coordinated by the University of Leeds, the other project partners include the University of Heidelberg, Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA), NHS England, University College Cork, Semmelweis University in Budapest, and the University of Copenhagen.
Aridhia will provide the technological framework - a private analytical workspace - enabling the partners to interrogate the project data. The raw data will be gathered across the partner countries and analysed in Aridhia's data science platform, AnalytiXagility. Aridhia will also create a bespoke dashboard for insurers and healthcare providers, and an app which allows patients to provide feedback on their care.
AnalytiXagility's Software as a Service (SaaS) analytical workspaces mark a change in how healthcare analytics services are procured. It was awarded a place on the UK Government's G-Cloud framework earlier this year, making it available to healthcare providers on a monthly subscription basis. This means they do not need to commit to costly on-premise infrastructure or become locked into long-term contracts.
Since the launch of AnalytiXagility last year, Aridhia has used its analytics capabilities to support integrated care for diseases including renal cancer, and has enabled research projects on a range of health issues including diabetes, traumatic brain injury, and multiple sclerosis.
Chris Roche, CEO at Aridhia, commented: “We are honoured to have been successful in our bid for Horizon 2020 project funding and, even more so, to be collaborating with such a strong group of partners over the next four years to develop an evidence-based, preventative oral healthcare model.
"The SaaS model we operate with our platform offers a key advantage to the partnership in that there is no need to create the complex data analytics infrastructure from scratch; meaning time and funding can be spent wholly on valuable research into oral care."
At Aridhia, a multidisciplinary team will work on the project, which begins next month, drawn from across its engineering, software development, data science and information governance teams.
Aridhia's bid was supported by the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) Scotland, which helps to connect businesses with European partners and understand the various EU funding opportunities available. It is part of Scottish Enterprise and has close connections with network partners and expert advisers across Europe.
The EEN Scotland worked with Aridhia to put together a partnering profile. It promoted it through the network and connected the company with European projects through its data and participation in four targeted Horizon 2020 Matchmaking events. The connections during these meetings have helped Aridhia to find partners for a number of Horizon 2020 consortium-based projects.
Camille Moran of the EEN Scotland said: "Aridhia is a company that really understands how SMEs can benefit from European funding. They have worked closely with the EEN Scotland since 2013, first profiling their offer, and then to identify appropriate projects and partners. The team have put in the necessary time to go out to Horizon2020 information days, partnering events and expressing interest to opportunities advertised on the EEN Partnering Database, which has resulted in their continued success with European projects."
Horizon 2020 is the biggest ever EU research and innovation programme, making nearly €80 billion of funding available between 2014 and 2020. It promises to take great ideas from the laboratory to market, and places emphasis on the economic impact of the research and innovation it supports. The programme is the latest of the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development and follows FP7, which invested a budget of €50 billion between 2007 and 2013.
About Aridhia Informatics
Aridhia is a world-leading clinical and translational informatics company developing world-leading technology and capability to accelerate the translation of precision medicine and biomedical research into clinical practice. Operating internationally on projects in Kuwait, Australia, England and Scotland, Aridhia works closely with governments, health organisations, research collaborations and academic institutions.
Aridhia was co-founded in 2007 by Dr David Sibbald a software entrepreneur, philanthropist and Vice-President of UK UNICEF, the United Nations children's fund, and Professor Andrew Morris, Chief Scientist for Health in Scotland and Professor of Medicine, Director of the Institute of Population Heath Sciences and Informatics, and Vice-Principal of the University for Data Science at the University of Edinburgh.
Based in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Aridhia has a 60-strong multidisciplinary team of data scientists, information governance specialists, computer scientists, software developers and healthcare experts.