Last updated Oct 2, 2018

Find out how UK Biobank is being used to improve health

We will be holding a series of events across the UK to thank you for participating, and to tell you more about how the resource is being used. At these events, you will hear from scientists undertaking research using UK Biobank data, and you will find out how the resource is being strengthened. There will be opportunities to ask questions and to speak directly with scientists undertaking research.

Here are some of the most common questions:

• Is UK Biobank representative? It is not possible (and was never intended) to make UK Biobank representative of the country as a whole. UK Biobank’s 500,000 participants are generally healthier, leaner, and smoke less than their fellow countrymen and women, suffering less heart and kidney disease and cancer. However, this well-established ‘healthy volunteer’ effect does not reduce the value of the resource – its large size and diversity of measures means that results will be relevant to most people (in the way that the definitive study to link smoking with lung cancer was undertaken on 50,000 UK, predominantly male, GPs in the 1950s).
• Am I still in UK Biobank now I have reached 70? Yes, most certainly. We are still very interested in you! Though we asked people aged 40-69 to join UK Biobank, our intention is to follow your health for as long as we possibly can. This will tell us why some people stay healthy into ripe old age, and why others get ill.
• Can the pharmaceutical industry use UK Biobank? Yes. We all want to see the resource used as widely as possible to bring advances in health more quickly, and there are many excellent researchers asking important questions within industry. Very often industry has funds available to undertake the most expensive analyses, the results of which will be put back into UK Biobank for all other researchers to use (such as the data from the UK Biobank exome sequencing initiative).
• Do you work with other studies? Yes, if you have seen the value in joining UK Biobank, it’s quite possible you have participated in other major health studies as well. For this reason, UK Biobank works with big initiatives like the Million Women Study and the Bristol-based Children of the 90s (ALSPAC) to assess the scientific benefit of combining (or excluding) data on participants in more than one study. We are learning how to link and make best use of this extra data while ensuring participants’ privacy is retained.

In each location we visit, invitations will be sent out by email to a random selection of participants in the area. Unfortunately we cannot invite everyone along each time we hold an event, due to venue sizes and in order to allow people to ask questions with ease. But don’t worry if you do not receive an invite when we visit your area, we will be visiting locations more than once. We will also make the presentations available on this page.

We have held a number of these events already over the last year and videos, audio files and presentations are available below for you to view.

Videos

 

 

Audio

Professor Rory Collins, UK Biobank, Oxford University

 

Dr Aiden Doherty, Oxford University, Physical activity and its health consequences

Susan Wallace – UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council

Mr Andrew Russell, UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (EGC)

Professor Søren Holm, UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (EGC) – The role of the EGC

 

Rob Gillions, UK Biobank – Activity monitor project

Steve Garratt, UK Biobank – Imaging project

Slides

Dr Aiden Doherty, Oxford University, Physical activity and its health consequences

Presentation slides

Professor Naveed Sattar, Glasgow University: Diet, Diabetes and Brain Function

Presentation slides

Dr Carlos Celis, Glasgow University: Can walking or cycling to work reduce our risk of dying early?

Presentation slides

Visual impairment in the UK Biobank study – Martin McKibbin, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Slides

Professor Daniel Smith, Glasgow University: How UK Biobank is helping us to understand mental health better

Slides

Mr Andrew Trehearne – background to the UK Biobank project

Slides

Professor Søren Holm, UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (EGC) – The role of the EGC

Slides

Rob Gillions, UK Biobank – Activity monitor project

Slides

Steve Garratt, UK Biobank – Imaging project

Slides

Dr Tim Peakman, UK Biobank – future enhancements to the resource
Slides

Professor Cathie Sudlow, UK Biobank – Past and future work of the resource

Slides

 

 

Video and audio transcripts

Professor Daniel Smith, Glasgow University: How UK Biobank is helping us to understand mental health better

Video Transcript

Visual impairment in the UK Biobank study – Martin McKibbin, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Transcript

Mr Andrew Trehearne – background to the UK Biobank project

Transcript

Mr Andrew Russell, UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (EGC)

Transcript

Professor Bill Deakin, Manchester University – Depression

Video Transcript

Dr Tim Peakman, UK Biobank – future enhancements to the resource
Video Transcript

Dr Piers Dawes, Manchester University – Hearing
Video Transcript

Dr Suzzanne Verstappen, Manchester University – Arthritis
Video Transcript