FAIR TREATMENT: Federated Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Research across Trusted Research Environments for Child and Adolescent Mental Health

It is possible to spot patterns showing where professional help is needed early. However, this is difficult as the information needed is secured in different places – for example, across health, education and social care records – and falls under the remit of different UK Research and Innovation research councils (such as the Medical Research Council or the Economic and Social Research Council).

The main problems are:

1. Predictive models aren’t accurate enough: there are difficulties linking different types of data together, potentially resulting in many important risk or resilience factors being missed.
2. Models built in one place may not be effective in others: we need a way to securely analyse data from different places.
3. There is no agreement on how to make sure data are managed safely, fairly and transparently.

To solve these problems, this research:

1. Combined two new technologies to demonstrate it is possible to analyse data across trusted research environments in different places and preserve individual privacy.
2. Consulted with patients, the public, organisations contributing data and legal/ethics experts to agree the best way to oversee data use, ensuring it’s managed safely and fairly.

Principal investigator: Dr Anna Moore, University of Cambridge

Project partners: University of Cambridge, AIMES, InterMine, Bitfount, Kaleidoscope, Eastern AHSN, University of Essex, University of Birmingham, Cambridgeshire County Council, and the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families

Funded amount: £342,708

Find out more about the FAIR TREATMENT project and how it engaged young people in the video below:

@mqmentalhealth #MentalHealthResearch poster by Alisa Anokhina “Do you know someone who is struggling with mental health problems but isn’t getting the help that they need? In this video we present findings from a series of workshops carried out with members of the public to understand their views of linking multi-agency data to create early identification tools for children and young people’s mental health.   For more information about the Timely project, contact Dr Anna Moore on am2708@medschl.cam.ac.uk Study manager: Dr Alisa Anokhina Narrated by: Charlotte Burdge   Special thanks to The Anna Freud Centre, Information Governance Services, Tamanna Miah, Emily Bampton, The Timely Expert By Experience group, and our workshop participants.   This project was funded by Towards Turing 2.0 under the EPSRC Grant T2_15 & The Alan Turing Institute, and by UK Research & Innovation Grant MC_PC_21025 as part of Phase 1 of the DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) programme, which is delivered in partnership with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) and ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK).   Stock footage provided by www.videvo.net. Music by ComaStudio.” #mqsciencefestival #sciencetiktok #mentalhealth ♬ original sound – MQmentalhealth