Mathematical Sciences Seminar - Applying operational research for the NHS
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
No booking required
I will talk about two strands of my current work:
Paediatric Cardiac Surgery- Since 2001, all cardiac procedures in children have been subject to mandatory reporting and publication in the UK. But in the rapidly developing and complex area of paediatric cardiac surgery, what are the most appropriate outcomes to measure and how should they be reported? Mortality has often been perceived as a straightforward measure of outcome and is often used to evaluate surgical performance. Currently in the UK, mortality within 30 days of heart surgery in children is monitored and published by the national audit body and each hospital’s mortality outcomes are benchmarked against recent national outcomes using the PRAiS risk model developed by UCL CORU & Great Ormond Street Hospital. However, there are nonetheless some disadvantages to using mortality as an outcome measure. In the welcome context of falling mortality rates, morbidities following heart surgery in children are considered an ever more important outcome but they are potentially many, much more difficult to define, more difficult to measure routinely and we do not know which morbidities are the most important to track. I will discuss the benefits and risks of monitoring mortality and an ongoing ambitious research project to select, define and measure morbidities following heart surgery in children.
Embedded research role at Great Ormond Street Hospital - I have been embedded as a researcher in residence within a hospital’s critical care unit for 2 years. I contrast this experience with previous (and ongoing) traditional collaborations between academia and local hospitals, discuss projects I have worked on there and explore the implications for future closer collaboration between academia and frontline health services.
Contact name:
Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics