Tag Archive for: translational research

PR 36/10

King’s will lead a consortium of 15 European universities and two private partners to develop methods, standards and systems for the integration of healthcare computer systems for clinical care and research.

Clinical research is often costly and slow. It is difficult to find suitable subjects and time consuming to follow them up. TRANSFoRm will facilitate both these activities using routine healthcare data.

Robert Lechler, Vice-Principal (Health) and Executive Director King’s Health Partners comments: ‘TRANSFoRm is an informatics project that helps achieve the aims of King’s Health Partners to increase the amount of clinical research taking place in South East London, particularly in general practices‘.

Professor Brendan Delaney, the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity Chair in Primary Care Research, is the project lead as well as a practising GP in London. Professor Delaney says: ‘TRANSFoRm will demonstrate the use of routine healthcare data in clinical research using two exemplar problems, one in the management of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, the other in Diabetes.’

Supporting diagnosis in General Practice

The project will aid General Practitioners in diagnosis by integrating decision support directly into their electronic records systems. Dr Olga Kostopoulou, Senior Lecturer at King’s, will be studying how different types of diagnostic prompts and alerts might influence the diagnostic performance of GPs. King’s and Birmingham University will be developing a generic interface to allow GPs using different record systems to use TRANSFoRm, seamlessly integrated into their existing system.

Dr Kostopoulou says: ‘Prompt diagnosis is a fundamental task for GPs, as they are in many countries the gatekeepers to specialist care and see patients with early disease. The challenge is to identify patients with serious disease such as cancer or heart disease without over-investigating the much larger numbers of patients without serious disease. The symptoms and signs of serious disease are often non-specific and can be attributed to more common and less serious conditions.’

Peter Hewitt, Chief Executive of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity said: ‘We are delighted that the Charity’s support is enabling Professor Delaney and his team to spearhead such significant work in the field of health informatics. These two initiatives will not only improve the level of care provided to patients, but will also drive the scale and quality of primary care research across Europe.’

Notes to editors

Project details

TRANSFoRm has been funded by the European Union Framework Programme 7 (Project No 247787), Information Society and Media Directorate, ICT Health Unit, to a total EU contribution of €6.95Million over 5 years, commencing 1. March 2010: www.transform-project.org

European Collaboration involving TRANSFoRM

The Royal College of Surgeons of Dublin will develop a means for piping new clinical prediction rules into the system using a ‘web service’ and computer ‘middleware’. The system will be studied in the UK, Ireland and Greece (by the University of Crete) using a multi-channel recording tool (the Alpha Toolkit) developed at St Georges’ Hospital Medical School.

The University of Antwerp, representing the European General Practice Research Network and Primary Care Diabetes Europe, and the University of Dundee will develop predictors of risk of complications of Type 2 Diabetes using a very large phenotype-genotype association study. The Karolinska Institute, representing the European Primary Care Gastroenterology Society, will study the long-term effectiveness of on-demand vs. continuous use of acid suppression in gastro-oesophageal reflux in a very large randomised trial. The TRANSFoRm system will be developed by Trinity College Dublin, the University of Birmingham, the University of Limerick, Imperial College London and King’s College London using an open source model.

The Mediterranean Institute of Primary Care (Malta), the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority, General Practice Research Database (UK), NIVEL (Netherlands) and Language and Computing (Belgium) will assist in these areas. The University of Dusseldorf will manage project ethics and also dissemination activities via the European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network. Quintiles UK and Ireland will explore and demonstrate the role of TRANSFoRm in commercial clinical trials.

King’s College London

King’s College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher Education 2009) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King’s has more than 21,000 students from nearly 140 countries, and more than 5,700 employees. King’s is in the second phase of a £1 billion redevelopment programme which is transforming its estate.

King’s has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise for British universities, 23 departments were ranked in the top quartile of British universities; over half of our academic staff work in departments that are in the top 10 per cent in the UK in their field and can thus be classed as world leading. The College is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings and has an overall annual income of nearly £450 million.

King’s has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, the sciences (including a wide range of health areas such as psychiatry, medicine and dentistry) and social sciences including international affairs. It has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and research that led to the development of radio, television, mobile phones and radar. It is the largest centre for the education of healthcare professionals in Europe; no university has more Medical Research Council Centres.

King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts are part of King’s Health Partners. King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) is a pioneering global collaboration between one of the world’s leading research-led universities and three of London’s most successful NHS Foundation Trusts, including leading teaching hospitals and comprehensive mental health services. For more information, visit: www.kingshealthpartners.org.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity is one of the UK’s largest and most innovative NHS charities. The Charity’s aim is to ensure patients get the very best care possible in the best environment by funding new services and approaches to healthcare at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Lambeth, NHS Southwark, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.  For further information contact Kate Mensah, Head of Communications on Tel: 0207188 1218 or mob: 077 22 119157 or email: [email protected] or visit www.gsttcharity.org.uk

Further information

Kate Moore, Public Relations Officer (Health)

Public Relations Department

Tel: 0207 848 4334

Email: [email protected]

King’s College London News Archive – http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?year=2010&news_id=1290