New centres aim to marry biological data to the increasing power of IT systems to make sense of them

Four new centres harnessing the power of data to improve healthcare in the United Kingdom have been formally launched at a conference in London.

Funded to the tune of £19m (€22.5m; $29.6m) by a group of government and charity funders led by the Medical Research Council, the E-Health Informatics Research Centres promise to use novel digital techniques to link NHS patient records with other data drawn from a wide range of sources to shed new light on common conditions.

The four centres, chosen by competitive tender, are based at University College London and the universities of Dundee, Swansea, and Manchester. Each centre will …