Technology in Clinical Research: The Inaugural BDAU Data Summit

Clinical Research Fellow Sunir Gohil with Joshua Symons from the BDAU.

The Big Data and Analytical Unit within the Centre for Health Policy host their first annual Summit.

The BDAU (Big Data & Analytical Unit) within IGHI’s Centre for Health Policy delivered their first data summit and researchers meeting on 26th November to a packed audience at the Royal School of Mines. The purpose of the conference was not only to showcase custom and innovative technology being used to improve clinical research from around the college, but to bring together researchers and technologists in the same room to reflect the founding purpose of the BDAU.

The BDAU, which was founded 3 years ago, brings together experts from the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, statistics, epidemiology, and informatics, to create a data-driven evidence base for healthcare policy. The multidisciplinary team conducts complex and innovative analyses and develops new analytical methods to gain insight from large datasets. The BDAU also creates custom software where required to fill existing gaps for clinical research.

The summit heard from a number of clinical presenters on how big data is aiding and shaping global health policy and research and uses of unique, innovative, and linked datasets to improve outcomes for patients. It also offered the chance to sign up for unique free workshops being hosted by the BDAU in areas such as machine learning, clinical datasets, network analysis, and data manipulation.

Speakers at the event included Dr Jennifer K Quint from Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute, who outlined using electronic health records along with wearable sensors to capture air quality data for studying respiratory disease, Xian Yang from Imperial’s Data Science Institute who showcased the custom platform eTRIKS which is used to study biomarkers for respiratory outcomes, while Dr Sunir Gohil presented the role of Twitter in public health using custom software designed by BDAU along side the enterprise visualisation product Tableau.

The highlights of the conference included Clinical Research Fellow George Bouras, who gave examples of the use of linked databases to measure harm across integrated health systems followed by the keynote presentation on ‘Learning Health Systems’ which was given by Professor Brendan Delaney who is not only a practicing GP in Rotherhithe but also the Chair for Health Informatics and the Director of the Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality. 

Erik Mayer, the primary clinical advisor to the BDAU and a Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery & Cancer, introduced the summit by highlighting the fact that ”In order to realise the benefit of big data, we need to think about the application of it and that requires the skill mix of multidisciplinary working”.  The BDAU is hoping to help bring not only multidisciplinary teams together in clinical specialities but also across technologies.

Watch the full recording of the Summit here.

All the photos from the event can be viewed here