The COVID-19 pandemic and heatwaves of 2022 demonstrate that we remain vulnerable to infectious disease and environmental threats. However, events such as these have also stimulated research to try to tackle them, including collecting new types of data to help us predict and track these incidents. In parallel there have been enormous advances in ways to analyse the data, including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The Health Analytics and Modelling HPRU aims to use these new data and methods to understand what action works best to reduce and respond to these threats to the health of our communities.

The main goals of this Research Unit are:

1. To understand the reasons why some people are more at risk of health threats than others, so that we can take action to reduce the differences in health across sectors of our society.
2. To forecast healthcare needs to help organisations like the UKHSA and the National Health Service (NHS) prepare and respond effectively to incidents like epidemics and heatwaves.
3. To plan and prepare for pandemics, including understanding how population behaviour may change (reduced mixing with other people, wearing masks, etc), evaluating the costs and benefits of prevention measures (e.g. vaccination), and exploring new ways to detect viruses and find out how and why they are spreading.

The HPRU will use state-of-the-art techniques from computer science, statistics, epidemiology, and economics to analyse data collected by the UKHSA, NHS, and other health partners. It will forecast disease, produce computer simulations of different policies (like vaccination or testing), and consider the costs and effects on the economy.

We believe that openness is important to allow our work to be checked, replicated and built-on by others. So, we will share the computer code and as much of the data that we use as possible (whilst protecting people’s privacy), and provide guidance and training materials so that others can adopt and adapt our work.

Ultimately, we aim to expand the UK's capabilities in advanced health analytics and modelling by developing new methods, making better use of the increasing availability of data, creating tools so that these methods can be used by others, and providing training and support to create a group of experts able to take this work forward and respond when emergencies occur.

The work will involve community-led approaches. Members of the public will help define the questions we address, help conduct the research, and help us to communicate our findings in an accessible way.

The ultimate goal is to empower public health decision-makers with state-of-the-art tools for evidence-based policymaking; improve the UK’s ability to prepare and respond to health emergencies and reduce the inequalities in our communities. In doing so, we will also help make sure that the UK remains at the cutting-edge of research in data analytics and modelling.

In collaboration with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London.