Infection

Farr investigators in the infection workstream have a strong track record of collaboration with Public Health England (PHE), London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Sanger Institute. PHE is a 'safe haven' for electronic health records (EHRs), with established legal permissions, governance frameworks, informatics infrastructure and statistical, modelling and economics expertise to hold, link and analyse EHRs in a secure environment.

Extensive laboratory and basic science expertise exists within PHE and the newly formed Bloomsbury Institute for Pathogen Research (a UCL–LSHTM partnership promoting new drug, vaccine and diagnostic development). UCL hosts the combined clinical, molecular epidemiology and demographic datasets for HIV in England.

Our methodological developments involve both linkage and new statistical approaches enabling novel use of EHRs to investigate: infections as triggers of cardiovascular and neurological disease; epidemiology and control of a wide range of infection threats, including influenza, severe bacterial infections, tuberculosis, HIV and STIs, and encompassing emergence, transmission, morbidity, mortality and effectiveness of public health interventions such as vaccine effectiveness, vaccine safety, screening and hand hygiene, and management of infections in primary care.