Understanding care pathways and clinical outcomes in neurological disorders at King's College Hospital, using CogStack, a novel data analytics infrastructure applied to electronic health records.
To start: October 2018
Award: PhD Studentship in Data Science in Neurosciences at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Kings’ College London, funded by Kings Medical Research Trust (KMRT)
Project:
In this studentship, the PhD student will have the opportunity to use state-of-the-art data analytics applied to electronic health records, in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of care pathways and outcomes for patients with neurological disorders in Kings’ College Hospital Foundation Trust (KCH). KCL and KCH has recently deployed a state-of-the-art clinical analytics system (Cogstack) with algorithmic semantic processing of unstructured text. This technology has been mentioned in the Chief Medical Officer’s 2017 report ‘Generation Genome’ as a key technology to enable systematic extraction of information from diverse text records. KCL and KCH are core applicants for the London site of Health Data Research (HDR UK).
The PhD candidate will use CogStack to perform a detailed analysis of patient pathways and outcomes of patients with neurological disorders. The candidate will explore the correlation of patient care pathways with specific outcomes using graph mathematics, network analysis and time series analysis. The range and diversity of neurological disorders may require bundling of diagnoses and outcome measurements together into streamlined pathways while simultaneously recognising the heterogeneity of neurological disorders. This work will run in parallel to ongoing transformation and redesign of clinical tertiary and secondary neurological services which will provide an important opportunity to explore causal factors for patient outcome. The candidate’s work will inform the design of data-driven healthcare delivery as well as a formulation of a common data model and architecture for both disease-agnostic outcomes and disease-specific outcomes.
The student will acquire the latest data science and research skills in partnership with King’s Health Partners Neurosciences Institute, with support from South London and Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre for Translational Informatics and Health Data Research (HDR UK) courses and skills.
References:
1) Bean DM, Stringer C, Beeknoo N, Teo J, Dobson RJB (2017) Network analysis of patient flow in two UK acute care hospitals identifies key sub-networks for A&E performance. PLoS ONE 12(10): e0185912 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185912
2) Chief Medical officer Annual Report: Generation Genome, July 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/chief-medical-officer-annual-report-2016-generation-genome
Supervisors:
Professor Mark Richardson and Dr James Teo
Entry requirements:
Applicants should have Bachelor’s degree with 2:1 honours. A 2:2 degree may be considered only where applicants also offer a Masters with Merit. A research Masters would be a strong advantage.
Degrees in the following subject areas are relevant:
- Biomedical or health-related degree
- Computer science or engineering degree
- Data science or mathematics degree
Applicants must be familiar with basic office software especially spreadsheet software.
Familiarity with any of the following programming languages (R, Python, Matlab, Tensorflow) is strongly desirable.
Award types and eligibility: The award covers home (UK/EU) fees, basic stipend (£17,000 per year) and some limited research and travel costs. The studentship cannot consider applicants that are not eligible for UK/EU student fees.
How to apply:
Applicants must complete and submit an online admissions application, via the admissions portal https://myapplication.kcl.ac.uk/, by 23 April 2018 23:59 GMT.
On the ‘Choosing a programme’ page, please select ‘Research degrees’ and enter the keyword Clinical Neuroscience Research MPhil/PhD (Full time).
In your application, you will be asked to include:
-Academic Transcripts – where applicable, academic transcripts must be submitted with the online admissions application
-Details of your qualifications (you will need to attach copies)
-Details of previous employment
-A personal statement describing your interests and why you wish to apply for this project. Please include this as an attachment rather than using the text box.
-Academic References – all admissions applications require two supporting references. If the applicant is relying on his/her referees to submit references directly to the College after he/she has submitted his/her admissions application, then the applicant must ensure that their chosen referees are made aware of the funding deadline.
**In the Funding section, please tick box 5 and include the following reference: RICHTEO-1801
Please note there is no need to complete the Research Proposal section in your application as the project has already been set.
You are welcome to email Professor Mark Richardson (primary supervisor, mark.richardson@kcl.ac.uk) or Dr James Teo (secondary supervisor, jamesteo@nhs.net) for more information.
References must be received by the deadline for the applicant to be eligible.
Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
Closing date: Mon 23 April 2018 (23:59 GMT).
Interviews: Week commencing 30th April 2018.
Further information:
About the IoPPN
Studying at the IoPPN
Research degrees at the IoPPN
Postgraduate study at King’s College London
KCL Researcher Development Programme