Dubbed Cambridge-1, the supercomputer represents a $100m investment by US-based computing company Nvidia. The idea capitalises on artificial intelligence (AI) -- which combines big data with computer science to facilitate problem-solving -- in healthcare.

Cambridge-1's first projects will be with AstraZeneca, GSK, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS foundation trust, King's College London and Oxford Nanopore. They will seek to develop a deeper understanding of diseases such as dementia, design new drugs, and improve the accuracy of finding disease-causing variations in human genomes.

Dr Kim Branson, global head of artificial intelligence and machine learning at GSK,  said that the supercomputer will help in the field of immuno-oncology where existing medicines harness the patient's own immune system to fight cancer.

Cambridge-1 can be key to helping fuse these different datasets, and building large models to help determine the best course of treatment for patients, Branson said.