Digital technologies are profoundly changing the healthcare landscape. This applied research area uses and develops digital health methods to advance medicine safety and improve use of medicines. Our researchers are uniquely positioned to deliver innovative projects which are effective in a practice setting, due to their skills in clinical medicine, pharmacy, behavioural science and data science, with proven a record of successful real-life interventions.
Use of wearables for monitoring medicine effects
High quality wearables are now available at scale, capable of measuring movement, brain and heart electrical signals, pulse, and body temperature. The use of data from wearable devices to detect, explain or predict health outcomes, called digital biomarkers, has the potential to improve therapeutic decisions. Digital biomarkers can be used to detect early adverse reactions, predict responses to therapy and quality of treatment.
Our research is dedicated to finding accurate and useful biomarkers using wearable technology. One of our key projects investigates wrist accelerometers to detect changes in frailty status. Our goal is to find an objective measure for frailty that could be used to detect and prevent medicine-induced frailty.
Decision support algorithms for appropriate dosage calculation in special populations
Adverse events due to inappropriate prescription are a significant cause of preventable hospital admissions. Many of these admissions could be prevented by improved decision support systems for prescribers, pharmacists and consumers or patients. Our research aims to narrow this gap, investigating reliable and scalable decision support algorithms that can be used and adapted to distinct settings.
