COVID - Curated and open analysis and research platform

What is CO-CONNECT?

CO-CONNECT is a multi-million pound research project to help scientists across the UK to access the data they need more easily to help develop potential therapies and treatment for COVID-19. It is funded by the Medical Research Council (Part of UKRI) and the Department of Health and Social Care (part of NIHR) as part of their direct response to the Pandemic.

More information on our UKRI Funding
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Data Partners
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Patients


"Building a network to ensure COVID-19 immunity can be understood by linking leading serology collections from across the United Kingdom"

Why is CO-CONNECT needed?​

The current COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths, severely strained health systems and damaged economies across the world. At this time there is limited evidence about how long immunity may last, with or without a vaccine and how that immunity may provide protection against emerging strains. Understanding who is immune is vital to protect vulnerable individuals, to safely scale back population-based interventions and for managing disease transmission.

To achieve this we will:

Standardise antibody data collection across the UK

Configure an infrastructure which enables trustworthy, fast, de-identified, secure analysis of data sets from across multiple sources

Answer key questions about immunity to COVID-19 and the implications for patient outcomes.  

A Collaborative Project:

CO-CONNECT is led by University of Nottingham with a team of four Principal Investigators with complementary NHS/academic skills across public health, technology and science.  The project has built a strong collaboration of over 40 leaders in their respective fields from across 20 organisations across the UK. Visit our Partners Page to find out more. 

Principal Investigators:

Phil Quinlan

University of Nottingham

Dr. Quinlan is the Head of the Digital Research Service at the University of Nottingham and Co-Director of the UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre

Emily Jefferson

University of Dundee

Professor Jefferson is the Academic Lead and Director of the Health Informatics Centre at the University of Dundee and a Professor in Health Data Science.

Susan Hopkins

Public Health England

Professor Susan Hopkins is the Senior Medical Advisor at Public Health England and the lead for the SIREN study.

Aziz Sheikh

University of Edinburgh

Professor Sheikh is Director of the Usher Institute. He is also Director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR)

Key Partnerships

HDR UK

Health Data Research (HDR) UK has transformed the UK landscape in health data science. CO-CONNECT has been formed from many of the existing locations of HDR UK, from HDR Midlands and HDR Scotland forming the backbone of the CO-CONNET technical team. We have been working with our key collaborating partner, Health Data Research UK, to ensure all the datasets associated with CO-CONNECT are discoverable in the Innovation Gateway and that request can be accessed from this portal.

tdcc

UKCRC TDCC

The UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre (TDCC) is a the national centre for biobanks. As such it has been in instrumental in developing the tools and know-how that have lead into CO-CONNECT. The engagement team from TDCC are supporting this effort to build long term relationships with the community. The technology being used was first used by TDCC and HDR UK in 2018 as a pilot across four cohorts.

BC Platforms

BC Platforms are our main technical partner who supply the software that drives the federated search. We are utilising their BC|RQuest, BC|Link and BC|Insight tools to help deliver a scalable, secure and powerful data discovery and analytics package to enable the datasets to be brought together without all the data having to reside in a single location.

BREATHE

BREATHE is a collaboration with patients and publics, UK Universities, third sector, Government organisations and industry from across the UK and globally. The Hub is led by The University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, University of Leicester, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Queen Mary University of London and Swansea University. BREATHE is the perfect partner for CO-CONNECT as it brings the wealth of experience in longitudinal respiratory datasets.​

Data Partners

COVIDsortium

COVID-Consortium: Front Line Impact of COVID-19 Name: COVID-Consortium (COVIDsortium) Principal Investigator: Professor James Moon Leading Institutions: University College London, Barts Charity  HDR Innovation Gateway Metadata Rating: Gold Work in COVIDsortium began the day…

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TRACK-COVID

TRACK-COVID Name: TRACK-COVID Principal Investigators: Professor John Danesh and Professor Emanuele Di Angelantonio Leading institution or organisation: University of Cambridge (Department of Public Health and Primary Care) HDR Innovation Gateway Metadata…

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PANTHER

Pandemic Tracking of Healthcare Workers Name: Pandemic Tracking of Healthcare Workers (PANTHER) Leading institution or organisation: University of Nottingham, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust HDR Innovation Gateway Metadata Rating: Gold The…

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Generation Scotland

Generation Scotland Name: Generation Scotland Principal Investigator: Professor David Porteous Leading institution or organisation: University of Edinburgh HDR Innovation Gateway Metadata Rating: Gold Launched in 2006, Generation Scotland looks at the…

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