GOSH & AWS Partner to Advance AI in Paediatric Healthcare

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is one of the UK’s most prominent and respected hospitals and is recognised globally as a leader and innovator in the field of paediatric care. 

Since 1852, the Central London hospital has provided care and support for seriously ill children, including those with rare and complex conditions, and their families. 

GOSH treats around 750 children every day, advances more than 200 clinical trials and provides thousands of educational opportunities through its Learning Academy.

Today, GOSH is maintaining its long-standing commitment to medical innovation following the renewal of its strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which aims to harness emerging technologies to improve clinical outcomes for children and their families, empower staff and advance research and education.

Building on an existing relationship that has delivered a range of digital, data and other technology initiatives, the agreement creates a strategic framework for GOSH and AWS to work more closely together.

By combining GOSH's world-leading clinical expertise and digital maturity with AWS' experience in cloud computing, data infrastructure and AI, the organisations aim to accelerate data and technology capabilities and tackle some of the most complex challenges facing paediatric healthcare.

"We are at a pivotal moment for healthcare,” says Karl Munslow-Ong, CEO at GOSH.  “Technological advances are creating opportunities to enhance care, operations, research and education in ways that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. 

“By combining GOSH’s expertise in complex paediatric care with AWS’s digital capabilities, we have an opportunity to develop new approaches to healthcare and enable a more connected, seamless experience for our patients, families and staff.”

Technology as specialist care enabler

The existing partnership with AWS has already enabled GOSH to deliver personalised, specialist paediatric care.

Speaking to Healthcare Digital, Shiren Patel, Head of Innovation Technology and Data Research at GOSH, discusses how AWS technology supports the development of AI tools for specific clinical use cases.

“We're already benefiting from AWS technology through our AWS Imagine Grant, which is supporting our work to develop an AI tool for childhood wrist fractures,” Shiren explains. “It's a good example of how AI can be designed around the specific needs of children.”

While this is just one example, Shiren points out that the renewed agreement could potentially open up a wider range of avenues for personalised and specialist paediatric care.

“What excites me about this wider collaboration is the opportunity to build on that work and explore where similar approaches could make a real difference across other areas of specialist paediatric care, helping clinicians make informed decisions more quickly and supporting more personalised care for children.”

Powering GOSH’s long-term strategy

The expanded partnership also aligns with GOSH's ‘Together We Power Care’ strategy and will develop four key operational areas: clinical care, operations, research and education.

Through these workstreams, GOSH and AWS will look to improve clinicians’ access to information and decision-support tools, enhance operational efficiency, strengthen the digital infrastructure supporting research and develop the AI skills and expertise staff need to navigate an increasingly technology-driven healthcare environment. 

A central pillar of GOSH’s strategy is to embrace innovation by using AI, data and digital tools to personalise care, improve diagnosis and treatment, and strengthen collaboration, all of which are areas the AWS partnership will help advance.

With the partnership set to run through to 2030 and be governed jointly by leaders from both organisations, Shiren believes the collaboration will allow GOSH to keep pace with AI’s rapidly accelerating integration into healthcare with safety and responsibility front of mind.

He says: “AI is evolving rapidly, and it is important that children’s healthcare organisations can keep pace safely and responsibly. Through our collaboration with AWS, we want to build the capabilities, skills and governance needed to evaluate and adopt new technologies effectively.”

Discussing the outcomes he hopes to achieve by the end of the partnership, Shiren says that "by 2030, we hope this will help us deliver faster diagnoses, more personalised treatment pathways and better experiences for patients and families, while ensuring innovation is underpinned by robust clinical oversight, safety and trust.”

Ash Thankey, Managing Director and General Manager, UK, Germany and International Organisations, Public Sector at Amazon Web Services, echoes Shiren’s sentiments.

“At AWS, our goal is to help healthcare organisations use data to arrive at actionable insights that improve outcomes,” he explains. 

“Through this agreement, GOSH will be able to access AWS' advanced cloud and AI technologies, backed by enterprise-grade security and privacy, to safely test and deploy digital innovations that enhance care for the children and families it serves."

GOSH - key partners

Roche

CEO: Thomas Schinecker (Group CEO) | HQ: Basel, Switzerland

Roche is a global healthcare company specialising in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, with a strong focus on personalised healthcare. Its collaboration with GOSH aims to establish a Clinical Informatics and Innovation Unit, using clinical data, digital tools and real-world evidence to strengthen research capabilities, improve clinical decision support and advance more personalised treatments for children with complex conditions.

Ardihia

CEO: David Sibbald | HQ: Glasgow, Scotland

Aridhia is a Scottish health technology company specialising in secure digital research environments for healthcare and life sciences organisations. Its platform enables researchers to access, manage and analyse sensitive clinical data in controlled environments. At GOSH, Aridhia provides the Digital Research Environment (DRE), supporting collaborative medical research, advanced analytics and the development of improved healthcare services.