The University of Oxford has been given the go ahead to build its latest data center – the Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery - which will store information on illnesses and treatments and will be available to researchers worldwide.

The facility is being built over two phases.

Phase I – the £35m Target Discovery Institute (TDI) - was completed last year and uses high-throughput biology to define better drug targets in collaboration with the industry, which the university said will address a critical ‘blockage’ in the existing drug development process.

Phase II – the Big Data Institute – will focus on the analysis of large data sets, which the university said will bring together leading researchers from across genetics, epidemiology and public health, clinical medicine, computer science and IT, statistics and bioinformatics.

During the launch of the Big Data Institute last year UK prime minister David Cameron said the facilities could help “revolutionize healthcare through big data and better drug discovery.”

The TDI facility is supported by the Li Ka Shing Foundation which donated £20m as a gift towards the project and also received £10m from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) through the first round of its Research Partnership Investment Fund (RPIF).

The estimated £45m Big Data Institute was awarded £10m from the HEFCE through its second round of RPIF.

The Big Data Institute will develop approaches for generating, storing and analysing large datasets in medical science for a better understanding of human disease and its treatment.

According to the Construction Enquirer as part of the sustainability strategy, a labyrinth is located beneath the lower ground floor which will draw in air through a light well and use the thermal mass of the ground to cool it, before circulating it to the main roof top plant room.

The air will then be distributed via floor plenums as part of an assisted natural ventilation strategy and extracted via the atrium using the stack effect.