HDR UK is funding six PhDs with leading UK universities and research organisations. This brand-new programme offers the chance to carry out a doctoral research project at the leading edge of health data science.
Each project has been selected for its scientific excellence, importance and originality and will help deliver the aims and objectives of HDR UK’s Big Data for Complex Diseases (BDCD) Driver Programme.
Graduates will be well placed for a career at the forefront of health data research.
Key details
- Hosted by: University of Cambridge
- Lead supervisor: Angela Wood, Department of Public Health and Primary Care
- Duration: Three years
- Stipend: UKRI rates apply
- No international fee waivers
- Start date: Flexible for right candidate
Project summary
It is far better for people and cheaper for health services to prevent or delay development of complex diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, than to treat patients after they become unwell. Knowing about the future risk of complex diseases can help people and health professionals caring for them make decisions about how risk best be managed through life-style changes and/or treatments.
At present, a wide array of tools are used to predict a person’s future risk of single diseases based on particular risk factors (eg, age, blood pressure, body mass index) measured at a single point in time. Two opportunities are being missed. First, because these tools target single diseases, the opportunity to identify people who are at risk of multiple complex diseases, and often interrelated, is being missed. Second, decisions based on measures at a single time point do not take into account important fluctuations and changes in risk over time.
There is an urgent need to combine risk prediction tools and decision making for multiple complex diseases together, and to extend these tools for monitoring of risk over a patients’ lifetime.
The overarching goal of this research is to enhance the prevention of multiple complex diseases by developing and evaluating risk prediction tools that monitor a person’s risk of multiple diseases over time and to translate the risk prediction tools into primary prevention strategies.
Eligibility and suitability
Applicants need a good first degree and/or master’s degree or equivalent experience in one of the following subjects: statistics, epidemiology, biostatistics, mathematics, data science, informatics.
They will need to be committed to open source, reproducible, research and able to work accurately, with attention to detail. Excellent written and verbal communication skills and organisational and time management skills are also essential.
Strong data manipulation and analysis experience/skills would be beneficial including:
- scripting skills in writing re-usable code in at least one programming language (eg, SQL, Python/PySpark)
- skills in at least one statistical software package (e.g. R, Stata).
- experience of analysing person-level data, ideally from electronic health records.
Click here to apply.
If you have any questions contact [Email Address Removed] or visit the Health Data Research UK’s website.
Applications
Applications are open until 14:00 on 15 June 2023.
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