Andrew is the CEO of Our Future Health, the UK’s largest ever health research programme. He is an internationally renowned epidemiologist with over 20 years of experience and started his career as a Statistical Epidemiologist at the University of Oxford. Since then, he has had a wide range of roles principally focused on the use of data to advance the understanding of human disease. He has worked across academia and the life science industry and was most recently Vice President Data Strategy at GSK before joining Our Future Health in April 2020.
We spoke with Andrew to learn more about the research programme, his perspectives on the industry, the charity’s aspirations for the future and more.
Our Future Health aims to be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, designed to enable the discovery and testing of more effective approaches to prevention, earlier detection and treatment of diseases. It intends to collect and link multiple sources of health and health-relevant information, including genetic data, across a cohort of 5 million people that truly reflects the UK population. This will create a world-leading resource for academic and commercial researchers to undertake discovery research on early indicators of disease, plus the opportunity to re-contact participants on a risk-stratified basis for secondary studies.
Over my career, I have researched and seen people spend many years of their later life in poor health. Too often, we treat diseases only when patients start showing symptoms of often quite advanced disease. This is both costly and less effective. Our Future Health is such an exciting prospect as it has the potential to shift the paradigm from treating sickness towards preventing disease before it occurs.
Our Future Health is designed to help people live healthier lives for longer through better prevention, earlier detection and improved treatment of diseases. It will speed up the discovery of new methods of early disease detection, and the evaluation of new diagnostic tools, to help identify and treat diseases early, when outcomes are usually better.
Building this large resource with linkage, feedback and re-contact will facilitate a new generation of discovery and translational research that will advance the development and testing of early diagnostic technologies and preventive interventions.
The aim of the programme is to build a cohort of up to 5 million people that truly reflects the UK population. Participants will be asked to provide information about their health and lifestyles and a small sample of their blood. With their informed consent, we will combine this with existing information about them, including their health records.
Collecting and linking multiple sources of health and health-relevant information, across a cohort of this scale, will create a world-leading resource for academic and commercial researchers. It will allow us to build a more comprehensive picture of health and wellbeing that could help researchers make new discoveries about human health and diseases, including on early indicators of disease and understanding what changes people’s risk of disease.
We will also offer researchers the opportunity to re-contact participants on a risk-stratified basis for secondary studies. Unlike many previous large-scale studies, Our Future Health will offer participants personal feedback about their health, if they wish to receive it.
Despite advances in healthcare and medicine, large numbers of people in the UK still spend many years of their later life in poor health because of common diseases and health conditions. Currently, 59% of people aged 65 or older in the UK live with two or more serious health conditions. By 2035, that figure is expected to rise to 70% [reference].
Healthcare systems have traditionally focused on treating people once they show symptoms of diseases. However, diseases often start in the body long before symptoms are detectable. It is a costly approach that leads to worse health outcomes.
With Our Future Health, researchers will be able to analyse data that will help them to identify more effective ways of tackling diseases. For example, they might discover a new test that detects cancer in an early stage, when it is easier to treat.
A big challenge facing health research is that many of the existing cohorts do not reflect the diversity of the population. Our Future Health has a big focus on being inclusive of communities that have previously been under-represented in health research. By ensuring that a diverse range of people participate in Our Future Health, we can make discoveries that benefit everyone.
Another significant challenge is the current lack of resources for early detection research, which require a huge amount of people and the ability to follow them over time. Our Future Health is aiming to overcome this by creating the most detailed picture we’ve ever had of human health.
Research is essential to make positive change in how we prevent, detect and treat disease. We have seen how research helped us throughout the pandemic and that was a great example of how improvements in the wider healthcare system can be made when resources are given to health research.
I look forward to when we can see the positive impact that Our Future Health has on individuals and their families and their communities. Ultimately, we want to see more people living in better health for longer.
In 10 years’ time, we will hopefully have long since hit our target of 5 million volunteers and will be seeing the impact of many research studies enabled by Our Future Health. I hope with this, we would see a widespread shift in focus towards more personalised and preventative medicine.
I would like to predict that the future of healthcare would involve a shift in focus towards prevention and early detection, allowing for more people to take control of their disease risk and to live more of their years in better health.
Join us at the HealthTechX Summit in London on 23rd February to hear Andrew Roddam’s perspectives on how healthtech and pharma can work together to tackle the challenge of health equity and global patient access. See the full agenda here.