Investigating the role of blood test trend for improved cancer detection using English primary care electronic health records data
Supervisors: Dr Pradeep Virdee; Dr Brian Nicholson
A recent clinical review confirms that simple blood tests have an important role in identifying patients for cancer investigation. However, analysis of National Cancer Diagnosis Audit in Primary Care data suggests that primary care investigations may delay referral. Smarter use of blood tests to select patients for further cancer investigation could increase cancer yield and reduce unnecessary referrals. The aim of this research is to utilise trends over repeat blood tests from primary care for early detection of cancer.
Data from ~28 million patients from the CPRD primary care database is available to develop the models. It includes information on patient characteristics, deprivation, blood tests, symptoms, medications, cancer diagnosis, and other variables over 2000-2019. It is linked to the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, Hospital Episode Statistics databases, and Office of National Registration death database.
Applicant background/skills:
Essential:
- experience in conducting/supporting medical research
- understanding of basic/fundamental statistics/data science
- motivated and interested in cancer research, primary care, and linked electronic health data
- able to communicate research findings to a multidisciplinary group
- ability to plan, implement and deliver programmes of work
Desirables:
- experienced in analysing longitudinal data from primary care
- experienced in working in a cancer-related position
- familiarity with analytic software, such as Stata, R, or Python
- experience in developing/validating risk prediction models.