Hello! I hope you are all safe and well. Since I last put fingers to keyboard in early February 2020, COVID-19 has exploded into our lives and has resulted in so many deaths here and worldwide. We should have been better prepared; we are very fortunate that our NHS has demonstrated such resilience – but at such a heavy cost. This must not happen again, ever.
On a lighter note, I write this as part of a deeply felt obligation towards our NHS and its various supporting structures including the still growing PPI developments. In one recent element of this there was a need for patient volunteers who had CVD, were under 70 and had at least one stent. I realized that for such a study I was ineligible as I was both well over 70 and predated stents – a true CVD ‘dinosaur’.
This year I have been impressed by Health Data Research UK and its role in our healthcare research and development. The age of ‘Big Data’ is well and truly underway. Hopefully HDRUK can flourish and become the public profile entity needed to inform our citizens and allay their fears about Data Security and Privacy. As they state proudly “Our vision is that every health and care interaction and research endeavour will be enhanced by access to large scale data and advanced analytics.”1 Hear! Hear! To that sentiment.
I first became interested in such analytical databases in the 1980’s on a course in cognitive psychology, attempting to design inferential databases. This was revived for me in 2006 when I was one of the 1/2 million recruited as part of the UK BioBank, the source of so much human health data used by the worldwide research community. Today’s analytical science using machine learning diagnostic algorithms is at the forefront of Big Data.
In February I had planned for this next article to continue relating my convoluted ‘survival’ journey from CVD to HF and life changes between those events. That can wait for another time. The world we now occupy has to work through and implement the changes demanded by issues raised by COVID-19. I look at America now with their private insurance, predominantly employment-linked health system, devastated by 30 million unemployed. Our world has changed, we must be determined to learn from these horrendous experiences.
Until next time, support each other, NHS colleagues, and stay safe.
Survivor from ‘68
You can read more from Bob in past editions of ECHO, available here.
References
- HDRUK Brand Guidelines