NHS Lothian joins Owkin’s patient data network with multi-year partnership

Owkin, a leading agentic AI company, and NHS Lothian, Scotland’s second largest health board, have entered a multi-year partnership - providing the foundations to build agentic AI that can accelerate breakthroughs and advance drug discovery.

As part of the collaboration, Owkin will work with NHS Lothian NRS Bioresource, a REC-approved infrastructure established in 2010 to support human tissue research by facilitating access to de-identified tissue samples, digital pathology whole slide images and associated data under the appropriate approvals and governance.

Under the agreement, Owkin will access digital pathology images and associated metadata from the NRS Bioresource to apply AI techniques to identify new drug candidates, de-risk and accelerate clinical trials, and develop diagnostic solutions aimed at improving patient outcomes.

The partnership builds on NHS Lothian’s membership of ATLANTIS - an extensive multimodal patient data discovery program across 7 countries in 11 therapeutic areas. This program has provided the resource for NHS Lothian to discover specific tissue and associated datasets across their vast oncology patient pool, making them an available  resource for future research.

More recently, NHS Lothian has partnered on Owkin’s project to develop an AI-powered product to screen for gBRCA mutations (BRCAura(R)) in breast cancer directly from digitised images of diagnostic biopsies without the need for other additional laboratory tests. NHS Lothian contributed digital images and data, as well as providing valuable feedback from experienced pathologists and oncologists on how such a diagnostic product could fit into current workflows. This is part of Owkin’s broader patient validation strategy, ensuring Owkin’s AI models are tested in real patient populations.

By contributing to Owkin’s multimodal data discovery effort, NHS Lothian will help strengthen the foundations for Owkin’s agentic artificial intelligence infrastructure, helping to speed up drug discovery, reducing the time from development to patient impact by connecting research to care.

Raman Ghuman, EU Head of Partnerships at Owkin said:

"We are delighted to welcome NHS Lothian to the Owkin Data Network. This partnership allows us to combine our AI expertise with their leading healthcare knowledge, expanding our Patient Data network to advance biomedical research."

Dr David Dorward, Consultant Pathologist & Digital Pathology Lead at NHS Lothian said:

“This partnership agreement with Owkin marks an exciting next step in NHS Lothian’s ongoing contribution to the development of clinically relevant digital pathology and AI tools designed to enhance diagnosis and improve patient care. Ultimately, this approach will benefit not only patients within NHS Lothian, but also those further afield.”

Press Contact: alistair.jennings@owkin.com