Healthcare technology company Drayson Health has appointed big data machine learning expert Professor David Clifton as research director.

The move is a joint appointment with the University of Oxford, where Clifton is an associate professor of engineering science, and will accelerate the university’s research into clinically led applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to the development of novel healthcare technologies.

Oxford University has exclusively licensed Clifton’s patents in the field of healthcare algorithms to Drayson Health. 

Clifton, who is also a research fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, leads the computational health informatics laboratory at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Oxford University, with a second site in Suzhou, China.

Drayson Health chief executive Lord Drayson said: “Professor Clifton brings to Drayson Health world-class expertise on the application of machine learning to clinical practice. He will be an integral member of the Drayson Health team and a strong link to Oxford, ensuring that the digital innovations born out of Oxford’s world-class research in AI get to benefit patients as quickly as possible.”

Clifton said: “Healthcare systems around the world have collected vast amounts of data which could hold the key to new scientific discoveries. Sensitivities understandably exist around moving and using healthcare data, however part of the attraction for me joining Drayson Health is the framework it has in place to ensure that discovery and applied research can be carried out ethically, responsibly and within the right regulatory framework – this is essential.”