Researchers have developed AI, called DeepMerkel, which can determine the course and severity of aggressive skin cancers enabling medics to personalise treatment.

To read more please check out the Newcastle University Press Office post about it.

To read the related papers

Alongside Dr Anna Robinson-Barella, Dr David Sinclair, Dr Vanessa Davey, Prof Barbara Hanratty, and Prof Adam Todd in the journal of Age and Ageing.

Understanding polypharmacy for people receiving home care services: a scoping review of the evidence

This review comprehensively maps the evidence on the prevalence and management of polypharmacy in home care settings and highlights promising strategies for enhancing medication quality. However, significant gaps remain in understanding of how care staff and recipients experience and manage complex medication regimens, underscoring the need for further research in this area.

 

 

Images of Radin Karimi, Dr Anna Robinson-Barella, Dr David Sinclair, Dr Vanessa Davey, Prof Barbara Hanratty and Prof Adam Todd

Co-theme Lead Professor Adam Todd of “Safer management of polypharmacy in multiple long-term conditions” and Professor Clare Bambra of “Safer Management of Multiple Long-Term Conditions in Disadvantaged Communities” co-authored a recent article in the BMJ Open “Ecological study of the association between the English national vaccination programme and area deprivation inequalities in COVID-19 mortality“

The paper concludes that inequalties in COVID-19 mortality rates could be significantly reduced by the National COVID-19 vaccination strategies. However barries to vaccination uptake in the most deprived areas need to be overcome if more is to be acheived.

Professor Clare Bambra and Professor Adam Todd

Our Data and AI CoTheme Lead Professor Nick Reynolds has been invovled in the developement of AI, called DeepMerkel, which can determine the course and severity of aggressive skin cancers enabling medics to personalise treatment.

To hear more about DeepMerkel visit the Newcastle University Press office page and view the associated papers below:

Kayleigh Davison Lead Advanced Pharmacist Practioner and NIHR In-Practice Fellow, Newcastle University,

Supervised by Professor Andy Husband (Director of NIHR Newcastle PSRC) and Dr Anna Robinson-Barella (EDI Theme Lead for NIHR Newcastle PSRC).

Hi I am Kayleigh Davison, Lead Advanced Pharmacist Practitioner and NIHR In-Practice Fellow, Newcastle University.  I’ve recently become the only pharmacist to be awarded a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) In-Practice Fellowship, which I’ll be balancing alongside my clinical work in General Practice.  The NIHR In-Practice Fellowship is an incredible opportunity that will allow me to develop as a researcher without stepping away from my clinical work. I started working in general practice as part of the NHS pilot for Clinical pharmacists in general practice and now work as an Advanced Pharmacist Practitioner. I have always worked and wanted to work within primary care providing the first point of contact in the healthcare system for our patients providing holistic care. I have been very fortunate to develop clinically within primary care over the years under the supervision and mentorship of excellent GPs. Through this time I have developed a special interest in polypharmacy (when patients are prescribed multiple medications) and in particular over 15 regular medications. 

My research focuses on polypharmacy (when patients are prescribed multiple medications) and health literacy. Health literacy is basically how well someone can understand and use health information to make decisions. Shockingly, 61% of adults struggle with understanding basic health information. For those on many medications, this can make managing their treatments much harder. But the connection between polypharmacy and health literacy hasn’t been thoroughly explored in the literature yet. My aim is to shed some light on this issue and find ways to better support patients who may find complex medication regimens challenging.

My advice for others that may want to consider a clinical academic career is to start talking to your colleagues in academic institutes about your ideas or opportunities that may be available. There is also a lot of support available via National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and within our region we are fortunate to have NHIP academy who supported me alongside the academics within the Newcastle Pharmacy school throughout my application process explaining the different fellowship options to giving me feedback on drafts, the academy was there every step of the way.

Congratulations to our Safer management of polypharmacy in multile long-term conditions research Co-theme leads Professor Adam Todd and Professor Barbara Hanratty on getting their commontary; “Beyond polypharmacy to the brave new world of minimum datasets and artificial intelligence: thumbing a nose to Henry” published in the BMJ Quality and Safety Journal.

Professor Adam Todd and Professor Barbara Hanratty

Professor Barbara Hanratty, Professor Adam Todd

Newcastle NIHR Patient Safety Research Collaborative (PSRC) – SafetyNet


The Newcastle National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC)is focused on creating research into patient safety for those people affected by multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs). This occurs when patients are affected by two or more long-term illnesses and is associated with poor health outcomes. MLTCs are becoming increasingly common in our population and the age at which patients acquire multiple illnesses is falling, meaning people affected in this way are losing years of healthy living. In addition, we know that people who come from deprived areas of our country or those from minority ethnic communities are disproportionately affected by MLTCs and the poor health outcomes that accompany this problem. Our research is designed to try and understand how this population are exposed to greater safety risks than might otherwise be the case. Patients who experience MLTCs have greater exposure to healthcare interventions, are generally treated with more medicines and are managed by multiple healthcare providers for the various issues they have. Altogether, this has the potential to increase risk for this group and our PSRC is designed to identify those risks and develop approaches to treatment that may improve patient safety.


We have four areas of focus within the Newcastle NIHR PSRC – around the risks of taking multiple medicines, otherwise known as polypharmacy, how we use artificial intelligence to understand risk in care pathways, how we safely transfer care from one provider to another and how social and financial disadvantage have the potential to worsen the risk that people are exposed to within health and social care. In addition to this, we have PSRC resources to train new researchers in patient safety so that we can build a group that is sustainable in the long-term who can continue research into this area. We are funding numerous programmes of further study for healthcare professionals within our PSRC.


SafetyNet has been created as a way for the funded PSRCs in England to work together. This is an excellent opportunity for us to share our experience and expertise to maximise the outputs of the funding provided by NIHR. As a new PSRC in Newcastle, we must establish a brand-new collaborative, bringing together various academic leaders in patient safety research across our partner Universities and hospital trusts. The formation of SafetyNet allows us to learn from the previously funded PSTRCs to benefit from their experience. This has been invaluable for us during the initial stages of our award, providing peer support and outlining different ways of approaching some of the challenges of setting up our unit.


SafetyNet provides the platform to share expertise and create synergies across our research areas. We have created links across PSRCs between colleagues with methodological expertise, for example health economics or artificial intelligence. We will establish meetings of these groups, which in turn will develop collaborations, with a view to developing larger collaborative grant applications, addressing patient safety challenges on a much greater scale than would otherwise be the case.


A key aspect of all PSRCs is the development of research capacity through the training and development of research staff who will eventually go on to be leaders in the patient safety research field. SafetyNet is providing opportunities for our trainees to network and socialise their research at an early stage in its development. We have the opportunity for our researchers to create meetings to formally share their work and early results or to focus on an individual discipline or research methodology, which has relevance for the PSRCs.


We are enthusiastic about the creation of SafetyNet and we look forward to it helping us to achieve out aims and objectives for the Newcastle NIHR PSRC moving forward over the next four years.

 

Hello, and welcome to my first blog post for the Newcastle PSRC. My name is Chris Lovegrove, and I am delighted to join the PSRC in June this year as a Clinical Research Fellow in Patient Safety. In this post, I will share a little about myself, my career, and my research.


Since becoming an occupational therapist in 2007, I’ve had the privilege of working in various specialities, from supporting vulnerably-housed young people to community mental health rehabilitation and trauma and orthopaedics. These roles have taken me across different settings, including the third sector and NHS. During a rotation at Frimley Park Hospital, I discovered my passion for neurology and decided to specialise in this area. In 2011, I took up a post at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital, where I worked in stroke, acute neuromedical, and inpatient neurorehabilitation services.


I have supported clinical service delivery in a range of leadership roles, supporting clinicians at various stages of their careers. A particularly foundational leadership experience for me was helping to lead a coastal community rehabilitation team during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing leadership during a once-in-a-lifetime global health crisis in a setting that I was utterly fresh to certainly presented challenges, but it was an overall enjoyable (albeit stressful) experience that strengthened my skills.


In 2013, I encountered a clinical challenge that led to the start of my clinical academic career. I was working with increasing numbers of people with Parkinson’s who experienced profound anxiety to the extent that it amplified their other Parkinson’s symptoms and stopped them from living their lives the way that they wanted to. After spending some time looking into this problem, it became apparent that there wasn’t an effective treatment for people with Parkinson’s with anxiety. My journey to address this problem had begun! I was awarded a place on an NIHR-funded Masters in Clinical Research degree course at the University of Plymouth. This was the start of my early research career and my first steps as a clinical academic. I was awarded an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship (now the Doctoral Clinical and Academic Fellowship, or DCAF) in 2021 to co-produce and feasibility-test a new occupation-based complex intervention to help people with Parkinson’s live well with anxiety. I am now at the end of my fellowship and analysing our final dataset. I’m excited to report our findings in the future and to continue this work as part of the Newcastle PSRC. I am passionate about developing future clinical academic leaders, and I look forward to sharing what I have learned with the next generation as part of the ACD theme.


I eagerly anticipate meeting, working, and collaborating with you to improve patient safety and public health for all, regardless of background. Finally, I have relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne from Devon in the Southwest of England. If you see me looking lost, I probably am! So please feel free to say hello. It would be great to meet you.

The Tilly Hale Awards are run by the Faculty of Medical Sciences in honour of Tilly who was a dedicated and passionate public and patient contributor and advocate for research inclusivity. They are awarded to applications with an innovate approach to including members of the public and patients in research.

Dr Charlotte Richardson, Dr Laura Lindsay, Professor Hamde Nazar, Dr Matt Cooper.

Dr Charlotte Richardson, Dr Laura Lindsay, Professor Hamde Nazar, Dr Matt Cooper.



For 2024, Matt Cooper, Hamde Nazar, Charlotte Richardson, and Laura Lindsay have been granted on of these awards for their approach to involving informal (unpaid) carers in driving their research agenda. The team is part of the Newcastle Patient Safety Research Collaborative and School of Pharmacy and will be using the award to develop a carer group to support across research avenues and develop ideas and approaches to improving understanding about the impact of caregiving on the carer and the person they support.



The group will meet multiple times across the year and be involved in supporting current projects, priority setting, designing research goals, and providing support on how to make research more accessible. Matt and the team will be holding showcase events across the award (in the early part of 2025) so if you are interested in hearing or attending these events please sign up to the SafetyNet newsletter or follow us on X/twitter.


– M Cooper

Across multiple independently-funded projects Professor Linda Sharp and Dr Laura Woods are seeking to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what underpins social differences in the proportion of patients whose cancers are diagnosed too late to be treated effectively, and what specific impactful routes exist to reduce these inequalities. Each of the three research projects make use of existing, routinely collected data on cancer patients, their diagnoses, their treatment and healthcare, as well as other, widely available data on the nature of different communities, geographies and localities.


The first project seeks to identify areas with particularly low take up of cancer screening, going on to use new statistical techniques to find out if there are similarities between such places. The results from this project will offer a different perspective on the challenges associated with screening attendance, as well as enable screening services to be more appropriately designed to reach communities where fewer people are screened.


A second project will develop a better understanding of patterns in head and neck cancer incidence (who has cancer?) and survival of these patients (how long do they live?) across England, with a focus on the pre- and peri-pandemic periods. The will examine how patterns in head and neck cancer vary by stage, age, deprivation and region, and whether these have changed (or not) over time. The planned analyses will provide crucial data to head and neck cancer clinicians and policy makers on current needs and priorities in head and neck cancer care, information which has not been unavailable for many years, and will help them better identify the current challenges in this very lethal cancer.


The third project will examine adherence to endocrine therapy (tamoxifen and similar drugs) amongst women in England who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, in order to better understand whether this is a factor in explaining inequalities in long-term survival between different deprivation groups and amongst different ethnicities. They will utilise primary care data to determine the proportions of women who take endocrine therapy as recommended, for how long, and whether patterns of therapy adherence explain inequalities in breast cancer outcomes.