Publications

Background: Collaboration for the Diagnosis and Evaluation of Acute Coronary Syndrome (CoDE-ACS) is a validated clinical decision support tool that uses machine learning with or without serial cardiac troponin measurements at a flexible time point to calculate the probability of myocardial infarction (MI).

Introduction: Trusted research environments (TREs) provide secure access to very sensitive data for research. All TREs operate manual checks on outputs to ensure there is no residual disclosure risk. Machine learning (ML) models require very large amount of data; if this data is personal, the TRE is a well established data management solution.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of implementing a high sensitivity assay for cardiac troponin I on long term outcomes in patients with suspected acute coronary syndrome.

This project aimed to address a major bottleneck in conducting research on confidential data - the final stage of "Output Statistical Disclosure Control" (OSDC). This is where staff in a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) conduct manual checks to ensure that things a researcher wishes to take out - such as tables, plots, statistical and/or AI models - do not cause risk to any individual's privacy.

Background: Sars-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, has led to more than 226,000 deaths in the UK and multiple risk factors for mortality including age, sex and deprivation have been identified. This study aimed to identify which individual indicators of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), an area-based deprivation index, were predictive of mortality.

Introduction: Child maltreatment affects a substantial number of children. However current evidence relies on either longitudinal studies, which are complex and resource-intensive, or linked data studies based on social services data, which is arguably the tip of the iceberg in terms of children who are maltreated.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is the commonest cause of chronic liver disease worldwide and represents an unmet precision medicine challenge. We established a retrospective national cohort of 940 histologically defined patients (55.4% men, 44.6% women; median body mass index 31.3; 32% with type 2 diabetes) covering the complete MASLD severity spectrum, and created a secure, searchable, open resource (SteatoSITE).

Background: Cardiac troponin is used for risk stratification of patients with acute coronary syndromes; however, the role of testing in other settings remains unclear.