A PARTNERSHIP worth £500,000 has been forged between an NHS trust and Essex University in a bid to analyse how care is delivered in order to help patients.

It is hoped the university will assist the East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) in tackling public services challenges.

The combined efforts of both ESNEFT and the university will largely be focused on data analytics, with the trust hoping academics at Essex will help them improve its approach to the delivery of care.

The analytical techniques which Essex researchers will use include modelling, machine learning, analytics, automation and robotics.

The complexity involved in running NHS health trusts means the amount of data which is used to measure performances of different departments is vast and therefore requires world-class analytics to help them run as efficiently.

The collaboration between Essex University and ESNEFT will see both institutions work on improving their use of artificial intelligence technologies as well as ensuring their use of the newest forms of technology becomes more widespread.

Head of analytics at ESNEFT Dr Hugo Herrera explained the partnership will ultimately improve the performances of clinical staff across the trust which will help to benefit patients.

He said: “Like all NHS organisations we have huge amounts of data with a broad utility that, when combined with novel analytical techniques, can provide new insights on how we can improve our approach to planning or delivery of care.

“Through this partnership we will bring together data analysts in the NHS and academia to deliver better outputs from our data for our clinical colleagues.”

The innovation partnerships manager at Essex University Holly Leonard added the stormy economic climate meant delivering high quality healthcare had been made more challenging, and the new collaboration with ESNEFT was welcomed as a result.

She said: “The collaboration with ESNEFT has the potential to genuinely improve health and wellbeing outcomes for people in our region at a time when external economic forces are making delivery of excellent healthcare extremely challenging.

“We're delighted to be working to support NHS colleagues in addressing these challenges and maximising opportunities to make improvements through innovation.”