Description
The Barts-UCLP-bridge is a pioneering clinical-academic datamart and data safe haven, enabling access to pseudoanonymised Barts Health (BH) cardiovascular clinical data. The datamart, which currently integrates clinical data on over 30,000 cardiovascular patients, was developed by Farr Institute staff at Barts NIHR cardiovascular biomedical research unit (CVBRU)to enable research in one of the largest cardiovascular centres in Europe. Building on the Barts-UCLP-Bridge infrastructure, the student will develop new analytical and data mart tools, using the open source TranSMART system (www.transmartfoundation.org;public.transmart.etriks.org/), towards the following key objectives.
• Enhancing the impact of Electronic Health Records: A TranSMART datamart will be developed to integrate primary and secondary-care data to better map cardiovascular disease trajectories in response to different therapeutic and device interventions. As a focus of clinical data mining and analysis it will also be used to feedback data to BH to improve patient clinical records and inform on clinical practice. Working in partnership with the BH-IT team, the student will also work directly with the BH Cerner IT infrastructure to improve data capture in BH source systems, thus improving NHS research and clinical data capture and ultimately clinical outcomes.
• New tools for genomic medicine: with a focus on cardiovascular disease in the Barts Health community, the student will develop innovative new TranSMART functionality to drive the use of genomic data in the NHS.
The project will develop tools to allow better integration of clinically actionable genome variation data with clinical data to better understand common and rare forms of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular drug response in East London populations. This will build on several world class genome sequencing initiatives on East London populations at Barts, funded by NIHR Genomics England, Wellcome Trust and the Barts charity.
Funding Notes:
Students should hold or be completing a master’s qualification in an appropriate discipline and have a minimum of a 2:1 in their first degree.
At present, due to funding restrictions, we can only accept applications for funded places from UK/Home and EU applicants. Overseas applicants who are self-funding or in receipt of a scholarship are welcome to apply, but are requested to contact the Farr Institute prior to submitting their application.
The PhD will be awarded on a competitive basis, so it is very important that interested candidates in advance contact the main project supervisor () to discuss the project and whether they are suitable to apply.
The deadline for applications is the 15th February 2014
BSc/MSc Computer Science, Bioinformatics, or similar
Direct experience of Data Mart design would be an advantage.
Strong technical skills, including, Java, Perl and Python are desirable
Salary:
The studentship is funded by the MRC and covers tuition fees (UK/EU students) and a tax-free annual stipend (currently £15,726) for 36 months full-time starting September 2014.