Predict
A list of our programme members and affiliates working in our Predict research theme.
Predict focuses on developing models from our curated datasets to predict the diagnosis and outcomes of specific health conditions, as well as those who would benefit from earlier / alternate interventions.
Core members
Steering group
We aim to utilise the UK’s outstanding health and health-related data asset, and work with members of the public, colleagues and partners across the UK, to provide key policy and clinical insights that will improve respiratory outcomes for the UK’s population.
Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict, Intervene & Evaluate
Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Co-Lead investigators, leading our programme alongside Professor Jenni Quint.
Based at the Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Aziz is a leading clinical respiratory epidemiologist with a special interest in the interface between health data science and policy.
His current work focuses on laying the foundations necessary to create learning health systems capable of using linked, multi-dimensional data to support and evaluate policymaking, health system improvements and the personalisation of care.
Outside of the programme, Aziz is the Director of the Usher Institute, and Dean of Data for The University of Edinburgh, as well as the Director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR) and a Research Director of Health Data Research UK.
He has substantial experience working across a range of research areas including asthma, allergy and in leveraging the potential of health information technology and data science to transform the delivery of care and improve population health.
Aziz enjoys collaborations with academic colleagues across the globe and works closely with policymakers both in the UK and internationally. He has, together with colleagues, held research grants of more than £100m and publishes regularly in the world's foremost journals.
Read Aziz’s professional profile
Useful links
Inflammation and Immunity is a fantastic opportunity to improve the quality of data recording and the use of data to better respiratory outcomes for people in the UK. We will then expand our learning to other diseases.
Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict, Intervene & Evaluate
Professor Jenni Quint is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Co-lead investigators, leading our programme alongside Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh.
A Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology at Imperial College London, Jenni’s goal is to enable better and more timely data linkage to answer important questions around respiratory disease.
She has unparalleled, specialist knowledge on using various sources of de-identified, routinely collected electronic healthcare records (EHRs) data in England to support research into the UK’s most common respiratory diseases. This includes COPD, asthma, interstitial lung disease, bronchiectasis and COVID-19.
Jenni’s ambition and vision are vital to our success. She recognises that whilst data curation and accessibility is fundamental to achieving our aims, maximising the quality, inclusivity and usage of these data is key to driving further innovation and development.
Jenni also leads the Respiratory EHR group which has developed a robust understanding of the strengths and limitations of using routinely collected health data for research purposes, particularly diagnostic coding practices in clinical settings and how these might then affect research outcomes.
She is also the primary supervisor to two of our PhD students, Zak Gassasse and Harley Kwok, as well as affiliated PhD student Rong Ding.
Read Jenni's professional profile
Relevant links
The UK is already a global leader in the use of routine clinical data sources to deliver patient benefit – this programme provides a unique opportunity to further enhance that capability in respiratory and other inflammatory diseases to address future critical research questions.
Programme Theme(s): Predict
A Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, Liam’s expertise lies in the clinical assessment and characteristics of “difficult asthma”- asthma that is difficult to control with standard of care treatments. This includes identifying and managing poor adherence to therapy, treatment resistant disease and often other comorbid disease which can make clinical assessment challenging.
Liam is particularly interested in using disease stratification - separating a patient population into distinct groups based on the different disease characteristics they possess - to come up with personalised treatment approaches and interventions for individuals with severe asthma
He hopes that by facilitating the widespread linkage of secondary and tertiary care datasets to primary care records across the UK, our programme will make it easier for researchers to gain a better understanding of:
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Disease trajectory - how a condition, disease or illness changes over time;
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Comorbid disease - conditions, diseases or illnesses that occur at the same time;
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Benefits of early intervention with target-specific therapies;
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Predictors of treatment response; and
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Barriers that delay or prevent access to healthcare
Liam is also the primary supervisor of Inflammation and Immunity PhD student, Amy Shackleford.
Outside of Inflammation and Immunity, Liam also leads RASP-UK (the Medical Research Council’s Medical Research Council UK Refractory Stratification Programme) who have substantial experience in developing both Phase II and Phase III clinical trials, from concept and design through to data analysis.
Read Liam Heaney’s professional profile
Relevant links
Find out more about the levels of healthcare in the NHS
Definitions
Phase II clinical trials
- Studies that investigate the effectiveness of an experimental drug or treatment on a particular disease or condition. It usually involves 100+ volunteers and can last from several months to a couple of years.
Phase III clinical trials
- Studies that compare the safety and effectiveness of a treatment to the one(s) that are currently available (the standard treatment). It usually involves hundreds or thousands of volunteers over 1 – 4 years.
Primary care
- A patient receives care from their GP, community pharmacy, dentist or eye doctor
Secondary care
- A patient’s primary care provider refers them for specialist care for someone with more specific expertise in whatever health issue you are experiencing. For example, a cardiologist or oncologist.
Tertiary care
- A higher level of care that requires highly specialized equipment and expertise, including complex treatments and surgeries. For example, dialysis for kidney disease and neurosurgery.
I see the health data landscape in Northern Ireland to be lagged behind other regions of the UK. I'm hopeful that the program can help close that gap and provide a lasting impact on respiratory research in the country.
Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict
Dr John Busby is Inflammation and Immunity’s Deputy Northern Ireland Lead, based at the Centre for Public Health in Queen’s University Belfast.
A Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics, John will lead on much of the data analysis conducted with the Honest Broker Service, a Trusted Research Environment in Northern Ireland. He will also be a key contributor in our discussions on how we can align our research methods across the four nations.
Although he works across a broad range of research areas, John has developed a particular interest in severe asthma. More specifically, he is keen to explore:
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Disparities in care, such as ethnic, gender, socioeconomic-based inequalities
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How treatment pathways can be optimized. This includes identifying when novel biologic therapy should be offered to sever asthma patients, and whether more personalized treatment can be offered to patients suffering an acute exacerbation to limit the adverse effects of strong medications.
John is hopeful that our programme can help overcome one of the major limitations faced in health data research. Patients living with chronic conditions, such as severe asthma, rely on a combination of primary, secondary and specialist care. Producing UK wide datasets by linking together data from these three sources will help streamline the process of finding, accessing and utlising these data for research.
Outside of the programme, John is the lead statistician for the UK severe asthma registry, the largest registry of its kind worldwide, and contributes to international collaborations in severe asthma including the International Severe Asthma Registry (ISAR).
Read John’s professional profile
Relevant links
Definitions
Primary care
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Care a patient receives from their GP, community pharmacy, dentist or eye doctor.
Secondary care
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A patient’s primary care provider refers them for specialist care for someone with more specific expertise in whatever health issue you are experiencing. For example, a cardiologist or oncologist.
Tertiary care
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A higher level of care that requires highly specialized equipment and expertise, including complex treatments and surgeries. For example, dialysis for kidney disease and neurosurgery.
Trusted Research Environments
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Highly secure computing environments provide remote access to health data for approved researchers to use for research across various scientific domains, research which ultimately can save and improve lives.
Researchers & analysts
I am excited to contribute to advancing knowledge that will improve patient outcomes.
Programme Themes: Describe, Predict
Dr Karen Jeffrey is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Research Fellows, based at the Usher Institute at The University of Edinburgh. Holding a PhD in Political Economy, Karen is a quantitative researcher with an interest in statistics, digital health and data science. She also possesses expertise in working with Scottish health data.
Within the programme, Karen is collaborating with partners from across the UK on several research projects. This includes:
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Predictive modelling to improve our understanding of who is most likely to benefit from biological agents as a treatment for severe asthma
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Conducting an analysis to improve our understanding of inequalities in asthma outcomes across Scotland, England, and Wales
Her enthusiasm for collaboration is not only restricted to academic partners. Karen also holds a deep appreciation for the role, importance and value of Patient and Public Involvement in health data research.
Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict, Data Infrastructure & Science
Dr Adriana Machado is an Inflammation and Immunity Research Fellow based at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an epidemiologist with expertise in dataset management and statistical analysis using Stata Software.
Her research interests include sleep, rest-activity rhythm, inequalities and population-based studies. Working within a new field – inflammation-mediated conditions - presents Adriana with a new and interesting challenge.
Programme Theme(s): Data Infrastructure & Science
Dr Constantinos Kallis is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Research Fellows based in Imperial College London.
Holding a PhD in statistics, Constantinos’ research interests lie in analysing routinely collected clinical data related to patients with respiratory disease. He has extensive, high-level expertise in data analysis and data curation, which he uses to support and facilitate the work of our Data and Infrastructure cross-cutting theme.
Affiliates
Programme Theme(s): Predict
Dr Holly Tibble is an affiliated member of Inflammation and Immunity based at the Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh.
Her research centres around respiratory conditions, including asthma, allergies, COVID-19 and influenza. Holly’s current focus is primarily on asthma attack risk prediction, specifically by using natural language processing of prescription data. She aims to investigate how various parties (e.g. clinicians, patients and policymakers) envision computer aided decision support being integrated into clinical care.
Programme Theme(s): Predict, Describe
Dr Ting Shi is an Inflammation and Immunity’s affiliate member, and is the primary supervisor of Daira Trusinska, one of our programme’s PhD students.
A Chancellor’s Fellow at the Usher Institute, the University of Edinburgh, Ting is an Epidemiologist with expertise in infectious diseases and global health. She has a particular interest in viral respiratory infections such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and COVID-19.
Ting’s current work focuses on:
- Understanding the short- and long-term impacts of RSV on:
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A person’s future health; and
- The delivery of health and care services;
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Developing risk prediction tools that can:
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Help identify which groups of people are most at risk of becoming seriously ill with respiratory infections during the winter months
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Help predict the extra demand experienced by health and care services due to these diseases
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These two areas are of considerable policy interest as an improved understanding of the risks and impacts of these diseases will underpin the development of future targeted and preventive intervention strategies (e.g. vaccination, monoclonal antibodies, antivirals/antibiotics, optimising care for at risk individuals).
Ting hopes that the knowledge exchange gained through collaborating with our programme will facilitate and enhance her investigations, as well as assist in sharing her findings to the desired audiences. In return, Ting shares with us her expertise in:
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Infectious disease and global health
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Statistical modeling and systematic approaches to epidemiological evidence;
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Analysing national scale linked data