UK Biobank: NGO against COVID-19 ^{Non-funding Support}

Entity: UK Biobank
Category: Non-funding support
Description: UK Biobank is a national and international health resource with unparalleled research opportunities, open to all bona fide health researchers. UK Biobank aims to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses – including cancer, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, eye disorders, depression and forms of dementia. It is following the health and well-being of 500,000 volunteer participants and provides health information, which does not identify them, to approved researchers in the UK and overseas, from academia and industry.

1. project
The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative (https://www.covid19hg.org/partners/)

2. project
Bugbank

Bugbank is a project that aims to link infection data from Public Health England to improve the study of infection in the UK Biobank cohort.
Infection is a major cause of poor health and early death around the world. We are all exposed to infectious microbes, but what is unclear is why some people succumb to infection when others do not? And why some infected people become seriously unwell, when others do not? The Bugbank project is developing infrastructure to help researchers address these questions.

Bugbank is a collaboration between the Oxford Big Data Institute, Public Health England (PHE) and UK Biobank (UKB). PHE is responsible for surveillance of infections and antimicrobial resistance in England. UKB is an ongoing study of common diseases in a cohort of 500,000 people aged over 40 when they were recruited in 2006-2010. UKB allows researchers to study the effects of lifestyle, environment and human genetics on disease. The objective of Bugbank is to link infection data from PHE to improve the study of infection in the UKB cohort. We have developed a system to dynamically link daily reports of infections in the PHE Microbiology database with the UKB system. This linkage of systems enables the identification of infections that have occurred in UKB participants.

3. project
UK BIOBANK MAKES HEALTH DATA AVAILABLE TO TACKLE COVID-19 (https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/2020/04/covid/)

Crucial new data on the health of 500,000 UK Biobank participants are being made available to scientists tackling the COVID-19 emergency.
The pioneering UK Biobank resource, which follows the health of 500,000 volunteers in England, Scotland and Wales, is well placed to help answer a wide range of questions about the pandemic, say researchers.