Launching London Tech Week on 13 June – a five-day series of events designed to help deliver innovation at scale – Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a review of the UK’s advanced computing capabilities.

Advanced computing– high-end processing power, memory, and data storage for carrying out tasks beyond the capabilities of everyday computers – is an important component of the UK’s digital infrastructure. It is becoming essential to crunching big or complex data in fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and more.

The new initiative will examine the UK’s needs in this area and explore what needs to be done to ensure they are met.

Sunak said, “From modelling the effects of climate change, to powering the discovery of new drugs and increasing business innovation, the capabilities of advanced compute are endless.

“The UK is a world leader in innovation and this review will help us maintain that position, as we embrace new technologies and the people that create them to drive forward our growth and productivity.”

The review will be led by leading AI researcher, Zoubin Ghahramani, Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge and Vice President of Research at Google AI and Director of Google Brain.

Ghahramani said, “The UK’s ability to do the hardest science, and help businesses be even more competitive, depends on more powerful computers. Advanced compute helps us model incredibly complex systems, such as what’s happening to the climate and how to stop the spread of pandemics.

“Advanced compute is fundamental to the UK’s national interest. This review will deliver a long-term plan, enabling government, business and academia to remain at the forefront of innovation and be prepared to fight the biggest challenges of this century.”

Data in health and social care

Also announced in London Tech Week was a new England-only plan for better use of data in health and social care. 

The document focuses on seven key issues. These are strategies to:

  • improve trust in the health and care system’s use of data
  • give health and care professionals the information they need to provide the best care
  • improve data for adult social care
  • empower local decision-makers with data
  • provide researchers with the data they need to develop life-changing treatments and diagnostics
  • work with partners to develop innovations that improve health and care
  • develop the right technical infrastructure

To give patients greater confidence than ever that their personal information is safe, secure data environments will become the default for NHS and adult social care organisations to provide access to anonymised data for research. 

Data linked to an individual will never leave a secure server, and can only be used for agreed research purposes.