How OneAdvanced and NWEH are transforming clinical research through clinical data integration

Our new collaboration with NorthWest EHealth (NWEH) is a significant step towards this vision. By combining our expertise in healthcare data systems with NWEH’s innovative research platforms, we’re bridging the gap between routine clinical care and cutting-edge research. This partnership is set to redefine how clinical trials are conducted, removing old barriers and unlocking new possibilities for medical discovery.

Recently, Digital Health’s News Reporter, Jordan Sollof, sat down with leaders from both our organisations—Nicole Kayode, our VP of Product for Health & Care, alongside Jo Verity, Head of Clinical Operations, and Rachel Downham, Chief Commercial Officer, from NWEH—to discuss how this partnership came about and where it’s heading.

A partnership built on innovation

Our partnership with NorthWest EHealth (NWEH) has been in development for around 19 months, following an early identification of the significant opportunity to work together to enhance real-world clinical trial delivery.

This collaboration has enabled the capability to utilise GP Document Workflow (Docman) clinical correspondence data within NWEH’s decentralised trial model. By integrating this data, we’ve strengthened informed clinical decision-making, improved operational efficiency for both NWEH and participating GP practices, and provided even greater safety oversight throughout the lifecycle of each trial.

As Nicole Kayode, VP of Product for Health & Care, explained during the discussion, "When NorthWest EHealth reached out about the opportunity to support clinical trials, it was really aligned to the direction of travel we were thinking of going anyway. You've got a trusted partner in NorthWest EHealth that has done this kind of delivery before, and a trusted partner in us that has supplied systems to the NHS for 30-plus years. It felt like a bit of a no-brainer for us to join forces and find a way to integrate the clinical record directly into the research process."

By harnessing the GP Document Workflow platform and bringing data from our document solutions—systems managing vital correspondence like referrals and discharge summaries—we now provide a rich, longitudinal view of the patient journey that was previously difficult to access for research.

Uniting patient care and clinical research

For years, clinical trials have operated in a silo, separate from the day-to-day reality of patient care. And this disconnect creates challenges. Identifying and recruiting eligible patients can be a slow, manual process, relying on busy GP practices to sift through records. Once a trial begins, monitoring patient safety often depends on participant recall or scheduled visits, which can lead to delays in identifying adverse events.

Our partnership with NWEH directly addresses these issues. NWEH has developed powerful platforms like Farsight, which identifies potential trial candidates from non-identifiable patient data, and ConneXon, a data hub that brings patient records together with their consent.

At OneAdvanced, we support this by enabling access to a richer, more complete data set. We provide feeds of both structured data from clinical systems and, crucially, unstructured data from sources like transfer-of-care documents managed by GP Document Workflow.

This information, containing vital details about a patient’s journey through the healthcare system, was historically difficult to access for research purposes. Now, it can be integrated directly into NWEH’s platforms, providing a comprehensive, near real-time view of a patient’s health.

Jo Verity, Head of Clinical Operations at NWEH, highlighted the impact of our data sharing: "As soon as I was aware that OneAdvanced had the capacity to share patient data—their discharge summaries, the medical letters shared between general practice and secondary care—it opened so many more doors for us to deliver research in different models. It allows us to really decentralise delivery models for clinical research."

As Rachel Downham, Chief Commercial Officer at NWEH, noted, "People who take part don't have the burden of having to be at a specific study centre every week, which may have been an inhibitor. This includes primary caregivers, people with kids to get to school, and workplaces to be at. It's ensuring we can bring in a population that historically may not have taken part, so we have equity in real-world trials.”

The power of a data-driven approach

Clinical data integration creates a more efficient and effective research process from start to finish. It allows sponsors to quickly determine if a sufficient number of eligible patients exist for a proposed study. For NWEH, our data integration has already proven invaluable for screening activities, ensuring participants meet the strict eligibility criteria required for a trial.

This brand new digital healthcare innovation offers several key benefits:

1. Stronger safety surveillance

Patient safety is the highest priority in any clinical trial. By providing access to a patient’s latest clinical correspondence, our partnership enables real-time safety monitoring. If a consented trial participant visits a hospital, for example, that information becomes available almost immediately.

This allows research teams to identify potential adverse events as they happen, rather than waiting for the next scheduled appointment. This proactive approach to pharmacovigilance strengthens safety and provides greater confidence for sponsors and regulators.

Patient data is also only accessed where explicit informed consent has been provided, with consent being obtained at the point of enrolment. Once consent is given, relevant electronic health record (EHR) data feeds securely into our clinical trials platform, ConneXon, enabling longitudinal oversight while maintaining robust governance standards.

"Patient safety is paramount in any research study, and this gives us the opportunity to survey patient safety while they're on a study," said Jo Verity. "We can view a patient who's been discharged at a moment's notice, which creates an opportunity to look at real-time adverse events. This wasn't possible in the research models of old, which were more hospital-based."

This capability allows research teams to act immediately if a safety concern arises, providing greater confidence to sponsors and regulators while ensuring the wellbeing of participants.

2. More inclusive and accessible trials

Traditional trials often require participants to travel to specific research centres, creating a barrier for many people due to distance, time, or mobility issues. Our collaboration helps support decentralised and hybrid trials, where research activities are embedded alongside patient care.

This reduces the burden on patients, minimising disruption to their daily lives and making participation more accessible. The result is a more diverse and representative group of participants, ensuring new treatments are tested on a population that truly reflects real-world patient diversity.

Rachel Downham explained how their Farsight platform uses our data: "We look at ethnicity, gender—we all know that in many trials, women are underserved—and we also have deprivation scoring. We can identify areas where people may not have the economic means to be part of trials."

3. Reducing the load on healthcare professionals

We understand the immense pressure facing frontline healthcare professionals. This clinical data integration model is designed to reduce the administrative burden on GP practices.

Instead of asking GPs to manually search for eligible patients, the system automates much of the identification and pre-screening process. While the GP remains the ultimate decision-maker on whether a patient is suitable for a trial, our partnership frees up their valuable time to focus on routine patient care.

But crucially, we’re committed to doing this securely and ethically. "For us as an organisation, data sovereignty is also a big thing," Nicole Kayode stated. "With the rise of AI, it's been really important to us to make sure our data is held securely in the UK. We are also ISO 42001 accredited, one of the few organisations in the world with this ISO accreditation around how we use AI."

Building the future through digital healthcare innovation

Only 42% of healthcare providers said they feel aligned with the NHS 10 Year Plan in our latest Annual Trends Report 2026. But the plan outlines a clear goal for driving digital transformation: data must do more than just support today’s care. It must actively enable prevention, improve safety, and deliver better outcomes at scale. This partnership is a practical example of that vision in action.

By connecting routine care with research and innovation, we’re helping to create a learning healthcare system. The insights generated from these data-rich trials can accelerate access to new treatments and strengthen the real-world evidence base for their use. It’s a virtuous circle where better data leads to safer trials, faster drug development, and ultimately, a healthier population.

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If you’re a healthcare professional or part of an organisation interested in the future of clinical research, now is the time to explore how a data-driven approach can transform your work.

Take a look at our portfolio of healthcare solutions, built for both clinical and non-clinical users across primary care.