OXFORD: Sensyne Health plc has signed a five year non-exclusive Strategic Research Agreement (SRA) with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, a news release said.
The agreement will enable the ethical application of clinical AI research to improve patient care and accelerate research into new medicines. The Somerset dataset covers 1.1 million unique patient records from a patient population of approximately 600,000 people.
Somerset NHS Foundation Trust is the first NHS trust on the English mainland to provide community, mental health and acute hospital services. The Trust was formed on 1 April 2020 when Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust merged.
It employs over 9,000 colleagues and provides community and mental health services across the whole of Somerset and acute hospital services in the north, west and centre of the county and beyond.
Research under this SRA will be undertaken to the highest standards of information governance and data security in accordance with NHS principles, the UK Government Code of Practice and data protection legislation. All data supplied to Sensyne will be anonymised by Somerset beforehand and the provision of the data will operate under an agreed Data Processing Protocol (DPP) under the Trust’s ethical oversight.
Somerset will receive 1,428,571 ordinary shares in Sensyne Health plc representing 1.11% of the existing issued share capital of Sensyne. This will bring the total share ownership held by NHS Trusts in Sensyne to 11.7% of the share capital (as enlarged by the issue of shares to Somerset and Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust).
The Trust will also receive from Sensyne an investment of up to £250,000 per year over the five-year term of the contract for specific investments in information technology to enable the curation and analysis of data under the SRA. The Trust will also receive a royalty on revenues that are generated by Sensyne from the research undertaken under the SRA.
The financial return Somerset receives from Sensyne will be reinvested back into the NHS to fund patient care. The Trust has entered into a lock-up agreement whereby it has agreed not to dispose of any shares for a period of two years from the date the shares are issued.
Somerset joins six existing SRAs that the Company has in place with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Chelsea & Westminster Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust, Wye Valley NHS Trust, George Eliot NHS Trust, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and a data access agreement signed with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
This new SRA with the Somerset NHS Trust brings the combined total of anonymised patient data available for analysis by Sensyne to 5.6 million patients, exceeding its 5 million target set at IPO in August 2018.
David Shannon, Director of Strategic Development and Improvement for Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are very pleased to reach this exciting and innovative partnership with Sensyne. Our organisation is committed to delivering outstanding care by continually listening, learning and improving and believe this partnership has the potential to help us improve care further and contribute to improvements in care across the country.”
Lord (Paul) Drayson PhD, CEO of Sensyne Health, said: “We are delighted to be working with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust. This new agreement will enable research to improve patient care and accelerate medical research and by helping to grow our overall data set to over 5.6m patients, will now enable us to broaden our research and expand our therapeutic focus.”
The issue of new ordinary shares in Sensyne Health to the Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust remains subject to receipt of a s593 report by the Company and a further announcement will be made in due course once the shares have been issued and allotted.
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