The committee has officially approved £49.2m towards the new Usher Institute building, which is expected to cost £68m in total. The balance is being funded by the University of Edinburgh.

The new Usher Institute building, to be based at Edinburgh BioQuarter, is being designed by architects Hassell Studio. It will provide a base for members of the Usher Institute including the Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit, as well as partners and start-up companies working in the field of data-driven innovation in health and social care. It is due to open in 2023.

Colan Mehaffey, chief operating officer of the Data-Driven Innovation Programme at the Usher Institute, said: “Through the Usher Institute, over the lifetime of the programme, we will engage and train over 20,000 students and health and social care professionals in the application of data. We will undertake health and social care research projects worth £138m.

“We will engage with 280 public, private and third sector organisations, we will develop a comprehensive health and social care data resource that will curate and make accessible around 270 new health and social care data assets. We will establish 49 new DDI health and social care companies in the Edinburgh and south east Scotland region.”

Professor Aziz Sheikh, director of the Usher Institute, added: “Our vision is to create a world-leading innovation hub where public, private and third sectors collaborate to enable data-driven advances in the delivery of health and social care.

“Through these collaborations, the Usher Institute will support a data-driven approach to the prevention, diagnosis and management of conditions, help improve health and social care provision in the city region and enable the development of a world-leading learning system for health and social care that can potentially be scaled across Scotland and the UK.”