Celebrating Healthcare Science Week: EMIS sponsored postgraduate research
This 2024 Healthcare Science Week, we’re celebrating some of the EMIS sponsored DPhil students and the exciting projects they’re working on to build a brighter future for UK healthcare.
Over the past few years, we've partnered with the University of Oxford to co-fund several doctoral research degrees. Investing in early career researchers is pivotal for advancing our understanding of healthcare while nurturing the future generation of research talent in the UK. We also offer these students the opportunity to work at EMIS for a period during their doctorate, helping them to develop their research and business skills in an industry setting. Read on to learn more about the inspiring work of three students driving forward advancements in healthcare science.
Enhancing vaccine safety for vulnerable patients
Meredith Leston is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, whose research is exploring vaccine benefit-risk for Covid-19 in immunosuppressed subgroups. Her focus lies in developing a real-time platform to assess the benefits and risks of vaccines, specifically for immunocompromised patients who have been overlooked in initial vaccine trials.
At this moment in time, vaccine development trials rarely include clinical risk groups such as the immunosuppressed. As such, there is little to no understanding as to how vaccination is experienced by these patients, and if there are any patterns of side effect symptomology, severity and duration between subpopulations.”
Meredith Leston
To address this gap, Meredith is leveraging our Recruit technology to identify immunosuppressed patients when vaccination data is added to their electronic health record. GPs can then send a text message to these patients through their clinical system, directing them to a data capture platform to report any adverse events in a timely manner.
Using Recruit from EMIS to respond to changes in the Covid-19 vaccine record, we have designed a novel pathway for patients to receive and complete a mobile-based survey to record any side effects experienced within the first ten days of receiving their latest dose.”
Meredith Leston
This anonymised data is supporting Meredith’s research, which ultimately aims to empower healthcare teams to deliver appropriate and timely care to vulnerable patients.
To find out more about Meredith’s research, click here.
Understanding healthcare career choices
Catharina Savelkoul is a DPhil student working in the University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division. Under the supervision of Dr Catia Nicodemo at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, Catharina is exploring how factors like sociodemographic backgrounds and educational paths influence career choices in healthcare and ultimately impact patient health outcomes.
Collaborating with EMIS, I aim to address the significant knowledge gap in the impact of educational pathways on the choice of a general practice as a career, as well as on wider health career choices. This work is crucial, especially in light of findings that demographic and socioeconomic factors can influence medical career choices, impacting patient health in economically deprived areas.”
Catharina Savelkoul
In partnership with EMIS, Catherina is embarking on a cross-sectional study through FourteenFish, our market leading learning platform and appraisal toolkit. By assessing GP workload, morale, and career intentions, she aims to support the development of informed policies that enhance GP retention and wellbeing.
To find out more about Catharina’s research, click here.
Advancing women's health through data science
Hailing from Beirut, Lebanon, Yasmina Al Ghadban is a second year DPhil student at Oxford University, specialising in Women's and Reproductive Health. Mentored by an interdisciplinary team from Oxford and EMIS, Yasmina's research revolves around using health data and predictive modelling to prevent and detect diseases affecting women's health.
Her current DPhil project centres on developing predictive models for adverse outcomes of gestational diabetes using electronic health records. During her time at EMIS, Yasmina aims to streamline the referral process for women diagnosed with gestational diabetes to the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme.
Leveraging the massive amount of routinely collected clinical data in electronic health records (EHR) can allow us to build predictive models to prevent adverse outcomes of pregnancy complications. Being able to research prognostic models during my PhD while also seeing how EHR is used in industry has provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the power of clinical data."
Yasmina Al Ghadban
Click here to find out more about Yasmina's research.
For more information on how we’re supporting academic research, click here.