Digital Health Interest Group 

Using technology to find healthcare solutions

Expertise

The Digital Health Interest Group has expertise in the analysis of large electronic patient record databases and other routinely available health data. In the Public Health Institute and Department of Applied Mathematics, we have conducted original epidemiological studies in a variety of clinical and public health topics and have created risk prediction models and health profiles on a local and regional basis. Our research groups have worked with one of the providers of linked healthcare data (the CPRD – clinical practice research datalink) to develop the linkage between primary-secondary care data with health economics resource groupings. Work has been directly translated into practice for example with the development of risk prediction calculators for venous thromboembolism in pregnancy. Within PHI we have additional expertise in surveillance and monitoring of conditions affecting public health working with a variety of service providers and third sector organisation to provide an integrated monitoring system.

The Group are actively engaged with digital health research, specifically in fields such as: wearable sensors, pervasive computing, Internet of Things, ambulatory monitoring of cardiovascular system, big data analytics (mathematical modelling) based on medical data sets and issues related to data privacy/governance with respect to digital health data.

We have expertise in applied health psychology and behavioural medicine, as such we focus on designing and implementing evidence based interventions to improve patient care and ultimately improve clinical outcomes. Our research develops real world patient impact and is not simply an academic exercise, working with health partners we aim to develop long-standing interventions to improve health care and pathways. We have a number of digital health projects in progress, which encourage patients and health professionals to engage in tech applications and programmes, for example COPD application interface to standardise inhaler techniques; smoking cessation applications; diabetes positive psychology to improve HbA1c, palliative care pathways, etc.