Ever heard of UK Biobank?
UK Biobank is the world’s most detailed study for tracking the long-term health of people as they age. The combination of four aspects sets this dataset apart from other similar initiatives.
- 500,000 people agreed to make all their health-related data available for research. They were between 40 and 69 years of age when they joined the study between 2006-2010.
- The study has extensive information on the lifestyle, environmental, and biological factors that are relevant to the development of different diseases.
- It’s been many years since participants joined the study, so enough time has passed to see which people have remained healthy, and which have developed particular diseases, so that researchers can find out why.
- The data are readily available for health-related research by academic, charity and commercial researchers worldwide.
I joined Biobank in May 2010. On that occasion, I went to a testing centre in Hounslow where I had two hours of questionnaires on lifestyle, a series of memory tests, physical measurements including blood pressure, and blood, urine and saliva samples. From then onwards, my health has been tracked through contact with my GP. All the data is anonymised.
In December 2019, I went to an assessment centre in Reading for a more intensive session of data collection. As well as all the previous questionnaires, tests, measurements and samples, I had a whole series of MRI, ultrasound and X-ray scans of my brain, heart, body, neck, spine, hips and knees and an ECG of my heart. All this took about five hours.
This week, I returned to Reading for a repeat of the session of seven years ago. That was another five hours.
The aim is to scan up to 100,000 Biobank participants.
UK Biobank is in a constant process of collecting huge amounts of data and now, especially with artificial intelligence (AI), it is much easier to analyse all this data and learn what are the risk factors for a wide range of diseases including cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes, stroke and arthritis.