What is the ‘Stroke Data Science Catalyst’?
The Stroke Data Science Catalyst (a five-year partnership between the BHF Data Science Centre, HDR UK and the Stroke Association) will enable approved research teams to generate insights using data from a range of real-world settings, including hospitals, general practices and pharmacies, to improve our understanding of stroke risk factors and open the door to better prevention and treatment.
Professor William Whiteley is the Theme Lead for the Stroke Data Science Catalyst.
Why is the ‘Stroke Data Science Catalyst’ important for cardiovascular research?
Stroke occurs when the blood supply is cut off to areas of the brain. Risk factors for stroke overlap with those for heart conditions such as heart attack and angina, and include high blood pressure, cholesterol and obesity.
Stroke strikes every 5 minutes and there are over 1.2 million stroke survivors living in the UK, you can read more about the impacts of stroke at the Stroke Association website.
What are we doing?
The aims of the Stroke Data Science Catalyst are to; improve access to data for researchers and health policy analysts who study the causes, consequences, and care of stroke; involve people affected by stroke in the use of their data; develop leadership in stroke data science research.
We are:
- Supporting and enabling researchers to better understand and use healthcare systems data. We held an introductory webinar to highlight the support available.
- Supporting driver projects that speed up the use of health data in stroke research.
Two research teams have been awarded funding to support driver projects that will speed up the use of health data in stroke research. The funded projects include:
Areas of work
Find out more about our data-led research.
Whole Population Data
Better use of nationally-collated, structured, coded data: accessing, improving and using linked, national, population-wide health data.
Defining Disease
Developing methods to define cardiovascular health and disease in computable form through a collaborative network of expertise that provides a world-leading, open, cardiovascular phenotype library of tools and protocols.
Data Enabled Clinical Trials
Supporting the development of efficient, cost-effective trials, using routine health data to recruit and follow patients with cardiovascular conditions.
Enhancing Cohorts
Facilitating the linkage of large, ‘omics-rich’ cohorts to electronic health records to better understand the causes of cardiovascular diseases.
Imaging
Better use of unstructured data: addressing the challenges of accessing, improving and using unstructured data, for example from cardiac and brain imaging, medical free text and electrocardiograms.
Smartphones and Wearables
Exploring how data from apps and wearables, linked to other health datasets, can inform trajectories of cardiovascular health and disease.
Diabetes Data Science Catalyst
This exciting partnership between the BHF Data Science Centre, Diabetes UK and HDR UK aims to develop improvements in our understanding of the link between cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Kidney Data Science Catalyst
This partnership between the BHF Data Science Centre, Kidney Research UK and HDR UK will enable researchers to securely access, link and analyse existing UK health data, speeding up the search for better kidney and cardiovascular disease prevention, treatments, and care.