Projects

Anticholinergic bladder medications and risk of dementia

Overactive bladder is increasingly common as people age and is often treated with medications called ‘anticholinergics’ or ‘antimuscarinics’, but there is concern whether long-term use of these medications causes memory problems or increases dementia risk. We are analysing the general practitioner and hospital records of adults in England prescribed bladder anticholinergics to examine whether patients with long-term prescriptions develop dementia more often than patients with only a single prescription. Estimates of risk will be stratified by treatment duration, for specific patient groups, and for specific bladder drugs. This study will help patients and clinicians make more informed choices regarding treatments for bladder problems.

InflAIM - Inflammatory drivers of shared long-term disease trajectories: An AI investigation of multimorbidity (InflAIM)

The term multimorbidity describes the presence of two or more long term conditions occurring together; a common example is the presence of diabetes, arthritis and high blood pressure. About one in four of the UK population have multimorbidity. It is one of the greatest challenges facing individuals and health services, both now and for the coming decades. To date, multimorbidity has been seen as a random assortment of diseases, making it difficult to address. However, with new understanding of the impact of various factors (including biological, social, behavioural, environmental and others), multimorbidity can be seen as a series of non-random clusters of disease. Improving the characterisation of these clusters with artificial intelligence and machine learning could have significant benefits to health and social care. We put together a multi-disciplinary team of scientists with expertise in clinical research and data science to use advanced computing methodology to examine the reasons why some people are prone to developing multiple long-term conditions. For more information visit the project website.

SiMSK Simulation of MusculoSKeletal Healthcare Services

SiMSK is a ‘whole system’ agent-based simulation of Healthcare Provision Systems for long term conditions, with a case study in Norwich Hospital. It reports on the system’s costs and efficiency in parallel to ongoing patient outcomes, in the short, medium and long term. It enables scenario testing, policy exploration and system optimisation. It is data driven, informed by attendance and patient register data. For more information visit the project website.

MyLongevity

The MyLongevity app was created to provide an estimate of life expectancy, based on a range of demographic and health-related characteristics. The calculation of longevity is based on the overall population life expectancy in England and Wales 2009 to 2011 as published by ONS, with mortality improvements between 2010 and Current Year in line with the ONS principal projection, England and Wales, further refined by our research on cardiovascular disease and the use of statins​ . The App was developed by the University of East Anglia (UEA) as a result of a collaborative project with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA), funded by its Actuarial Research Centre (ARC) programme. For more information visit the project website.

Big Health Actuarial Data

Longevity and morbidity risks are of essential importance to the actuarial community. Longevity is increasing considerably both in developed and developing countries, including the UK. We believe that to be able to establish the drivers of this change, and to predict how they may change over time and how this would affect life expectancy, actuarial researchers need to engage in statistical modelling of mortality experience using large scale population-based individual level data collected over the long term. The main objectives of this project are the development of novel statistical and actuarial methods for modelling mortality, modelling trends in morbidity, assessing basis risk and evaluating longevity improvement based on Big Health and Actuarial Data. The project is funded by Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. For more information visit the project website.

The Norfolk Arthritis Register (NOAR)

The Norfolk Arthritis Register (NOAR) is a large community based, long term observational study investigating the cause and outcome of inflammatory polyarthritis (inflammation and swelling of the joints). NOAR is sponsored by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in collaboration with the University of Manchester, working closely with the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. For more information, visit the project website.

Development And Evaluation Of A Targeted, Integrated, Coherent And People-centred Approach To The Management Of Multimorbidity In South African Primary Healthcare

This research programme will develop and evaluate a complex intervention to improve primary health care for adults with multiple long term conditions in South Africa. It will be based on an epidemiological study which aims to characterise multimorbidity in the South African population, including the prevalence, sequence, treatment and control of comorbid conditions. The primary data sources will be individual medical record data from the Western Cape Provincial Department of Health, and from private health care providers. The epidemiological and trial data will be used to populate a microsimulation model projecting national scale-up of the intervention, and modelling its effects and cost-effectiveness.

Health Data Interpretation Group COVID-19 recovery project

Healthcare Evaluation Informed by National Primary Care Data