Launch of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science

The institute will develop new tools and methods to promote change and improve lives across the globe.

---

Earlier this year the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science was launched with a mission to further the use of data, evidence and digital tools in healthcare and policy. Based within the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, the Bennett Institute builds on a foundation of world-leading healthcare data science.

The institute unites a diverse group of academics from a variety of disciplines, such as clinicians, software engineers, policy experts and statisticians. The result is that new tools and methods are being developed to ensure data and evidence can make a real impact by improving the lives of people across the world.

The institute has been made possible thanks to a generous donation from the Peter Bennett Foundation and is led by the inaugural Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, Ben Goldacre. In April 2022 Professor Goldacre published a review of the use of health data in England, many of the recommendations of which have now been adopted by the British government within its new data strategy.

Explaining the motivation behind the donation, Peter Bennett said: ‘More than ever before, we now have access to vast amounts of data. We have a responsibility to use, analyse, develop and apply this data in an ethical way to promote change for good – with an emphasis on targeting the right kind of growth and achieving levelling up in society. I am deeply passionate about the tools that data science can provide us with to facilitate positive change in a systemic way.’

Support research into primary health care