Projects Delivered

The use of hospital data has significantly expanded in the past years to better understand treatment patterns and patients’ characteristics. Comparing treatment and outcomes between hospitals is an important method of ensuring good standards of care. Undertaking studies that compare between hospitals, particularly between countries, remains a significant challenge due to data privacy concerns. “Federated” analysis, where hospitals can work together to complete the same analysis and share aggregate results while data never leaves the hospitals’ servers, allows robust multi-centre data-...

Asthma affects more than 1 in 10 people in the UK. If untreated, asthma attacks can lead to unease and at worst death. In the UK alone, every 10 seconds, someone has an asthma attack. The main method of treating asthma is using regular preventer medication. This comes in the form of an inhaler, and patients are asked to take their inhaler daily to lessen the risk of an asthma attack. However, there are many reasons why patients don’t take their inhaler, which can vary between adults and children. This study will explore which groups of patients are not taking their inhaler regularly and ...

The aim of this project is to establish the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on the management approach to emergency surgical conditions. As a model condition, we will use one of the most common emergency surgical conditions; acute appendicitis. Appendicitis can be managed definitively with surgical operation, or conservatively with antibiotic administration alone. The latter poses the risk of recurrent appendicitis and is often elected by patients as an alternative to admission and operative management. We aim to compare recurrence rates of acute appendicitis in patients managed w...

People with two or more long-term conditions at the same time (multimorbidity) can have complex care needs. The number of people in our community with multimorbidity is increasing. People with multimorbidity may be less likely to benefit from treatments, because they may be more likely to experience side-effects of treatment than people without multimorbidity. This can be even more challenging in emergency situations, such as in hospital emergency departments. Very few researchers have looked at the care of people with multimorbidity in emergency departments, despite how common it now...

More people are living with dementia. This can be a devastating and life-limiting condition that is of clear importance for the public, NHS and social care services. Having an idea of which people are at higher risk of developing dementia could help address known risk factors earlier in life, like smoking and obesity. We want to see how effective routinely entered health data from GP and hospital visits can be used to predict the future risk of developing dementia. This might include information like blood pressure measurements, other health diagnoses and blood test results. We will also...

Energy poverty (when a household must spend a large amount of their income to keep their home warm) is a growing problem. Cold, damp and badly ventilated housing is made worse by energy poverty and is linked to chest infections, particularly in children. However, we don’t have a good idea of how much energy poverty is affecting child health or particular groups of children (for example those with asthma or born early). To really look after children, we need to know how big the problem is, which children are most at risk and which actions by the government will make the most difference...

Background: Delirium is a common and serious problem for older people. It is a form of confusion which starts suddenly. Around one in four older people who go to hospital as an emergency are affected. Illness, medicines, and surgery can all cause delirium. It is more common in people with multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs) and in people who are frail. Approach: We will look at links between delirium, MLTCs, and being frail. We will study information for thousands of patients admitted to hospital with a hip fracture or an emergency medical problem. This information is collected in h...

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Secondary prevention is focused on patients with known heart disease to prevent a second heart event. This includes prescribing medications like cholesterol lowering medication or life style advice such a quitting smoking or losing weight. Trends in the prescription of preventative medications and life style changes in patients with known heart disease in Scotland is unclear. It also unknown whether there are differences between important patient groups (like sex or age). More insight on risk assessment and management of therapy i...