In collaboration with the University of Liverpool, NHS England, and Health Data Research UK, DiRAC is pleased to invite applications for a 6-month Innovation Placement focusing on quantifying the effectiveness of medicines by linking health care outcome data to medicine data.
Proposed start date: January 2025
Applications are now closed.
Medicines are the most common intervention in human health. In the UK, £40 billion per annum is spent on medicines; however, it is not well-known whether these medicines are being used as intended or if they are having their intended effects. This is because health care outcome data is not routinely linked to medicines data, and medicines data is often siloed across primary, secondary, and specialist care.
To overcome this, we are working with partners such as NHS England (NHSE) and Health Data Research UK (HDRUK) to address these limitations by identifying and linking medicines and health care data. This work includes several work streams:
Location: Liverpool (remote work possible)
The team includes experts in medicines, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, health data science, epidemiology, software engineering, and data management. The extended team also includes statistical expertise.
As a student or early-career researcher, you will gain the following experience in:
Data Management: Curating medicines data for use in healthcare and research.
Data Governance: Identifying datasets and understanding governance protocols.
Data Security: Ensuring permissions and transfer of datasets into a secure data environment.
Data Linkage: Linking medicines data to primary and secondary healthcare outcome data.
Data Analytics: Analysing data to support medicines use in clinical environments.
Data Visualisation and Alerts: Setting up dashboards to inform clinicians and healthcare professionals.
The project will be managed through weekly meetings with supervisors and larger monthly group meetings. A day-to-day supervisor will also be assigned. This support is essential in a busy NHS research environment.
Experience will be gained by working closely with Professor Sofat’s team, which includes clinical professionals, healthcare experts, IT specialists, and data scientists. Supervisory support will also come from Professor Jeremy Yates and Dr. Maria Marcha from DiRAC, particularly in data science and machine learning.
The project will be managed via weekly supervisor meetings and monthly group meetings. A day-to-day supervisor will also be assigned to provide continuous support.
The project will be managed through weekly meetings with supervisors and larger monthly group meetings. A day-to-day supervisor will also be assigned. This support is essential in a busy NHS research environment.
Develop general and disease-specific dashboards to determine how and where medicines are being used, stratifying data by demographic characteristics.
Create dynamic analytics that assess new patients on clinical pathways, integrating medicines changes between primary and secondary care.
We are looking for individuals with:
The candidate is expected to be an active member of the team, engaging in the use of advanced methods to assess how patterns in the use of medicines evolve over time for patients, focusing on common and rare medicines.
With support from the team, the candidate will be expected to produce work of sufficient quality that it will be suitable for publication in peer-reviewed journals. This will also form the basis of the report submitted at the end of the placement.
The NHS welcomes applications from all. All applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, national origin, gender, age, religion, disability, or any other category protected by law.
Applications are now closed. New Innovation Placements will be advertised on our social media and via the DiRAC all user email.
Placements are open to current PhD students and early career researchers, and are fully funded but you must get your supervisor or PI’s permission before applying – under UKRI rules participation in the scheme is only allowed with their consent.
The successful candidate will remain based at their home university. We do our best to offer flexibility; part-time working can be arranged as long as the placement does not exceed 1 year.
If you have any questions, please email them to DiRAC_placements@leicester.ac.uk
