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New UK-wide kidney-specific research theme announced by The Farr Institute

Posted on October 23, 2015

Kidney disease is to become the focus of a new programme of research that will seek to unlock evidence from healthcare data to support care and improve patient outcomes through a series of new research projects.

Launch of the Kidney Disease @Farr research theme held at The University of Manchester

Health data scientists from across The Farr Institute’s network of UK universities will work in  partnership with  collaborators from theUK and Scottish Renal Registries, the national CKD audit, PatientView patient portal, and the UK Renal Data Collaboration.

Together they will apply data linkage methods to unlock the potential of routinely collected health data and fuel research into kidney disease.  A substantial public health problem, Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) currently affects approximately 10% of the population, and Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) up to 7% of hospital admissions.

The Kidney Disease@Farr theme will build on existing expertise in kidney disease research and drive new research capabilities.  Using a combination of routinely collected patient data in electronic health records, high quality outcome data from the Renal Registries, an advanced technical infrastructure, and The Farr Institute’s experience in health informatics the theme will drive ground-breaking evidence in kidney disease across the UK.

The group’s initial meeting was hosted by joint Kidney Disease@Farr theme leads Professor Corri Black, from Farr Institute @ Scotland and Dr Sabine van der Veer from the Health eResearch Centre (HeRC).

“The meeting was an absolute winner in terms of building trust and relationships. Getting together has given us confidence as a group in seeing a way forward, with a shared vision that is bigger than the 'room view' of one or two studies.”

Prof Corri Black

“The Kidney Disease@Farr theme brings together the disciplines of Nephrology and Health Informatics to collaborate on a new wave of technology-driven health research, which will allow us to harness the exceptional potential of available UK health, care and biological data.”

Dr Sabine van der Veer

Dr Fergus Caskey from the UK Renal Registry commented, “You know it has been useful when you leave with completely different ideas than when you arrived”

Following the meeting a programme grant application will now be developed.

Ends

For media enquiries please contact Stephen Melia, Communications Officer at The Health eResearch Centre. Email: stephen.melia@manchester.ac.uk Tel: T: +44 (0)161 306 7876   M:07557 310 213

Notes for Editors

The Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research

The Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research comprises four nodes distributed across the UK and led from the Universities of Dundee, Manchester, Swansea and UCL.  The Farr Institute aims to deliver high-quality, cutting-edge research linking electronic health data with other forms of research and routinely collected data, as well as build capacity in health informatics research.

The Farr Institute provides the physical and electronic infrastructure to facilitate collaboration across the four nodes, support their safe use of patient and research data for medical research, and enable partnerships by providing a physical structure to co-locate NHS organizations, industry, and other UK academic centres.

The Health eResearch Centre (HeRC)

The Health eResearch Centre (HeRC) is delivering large scale, population wide health research by harnessing the power of information and technology.

Led by The University of Manchester and bringing together research excellence across the North of England (in partnership with the universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and York) the Health eResearch Centre is increasing the pace of progress in the UK’s health sector by turning under-used health information into new knowledge.

The Health eResearch Centre – People | Data | Methods

For more information please visit our website www.herc.ac.uk #datasaveslives