CORU News http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-viewer/rss admin 2011-04-11T09:09:41Z CORU work helps child heart teams get clearer picture of their results http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/34 For the first time, teams that care for children needing heart surgery have been able to review their short-term results across all the different operations they perform. Christina Pagel 2013-04-05T13:40:58Z Is surgery to remove secondary cancer always a good thing? http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/32 In this week’s BMJ (1), Tom Treasure and Martin Utley of UCL’s Clinical Operational Research Unit challenge the utility of repeated surgery for sarcoma which became accepted practice 40 years ago. Sarcoma is the name given to cancers of the structural tissues of the body (bone, muscle, fat) as opposed to organs (breast, lung, prostate). Sarcoma, particularly of bone, tends to affect younger people and if it spreads it tends to be by blood borne seeding in the lungs where the nodules of secondary cancer are called metastases. They can be removed by surgery - an operation called metastasectomy. Christina Pagel 2013-02-22T10:03:03Z Sonya Crowe awarded Improvement Science Fellowship by the Health Foundation! http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/33 Dr Sonya Crowe of CORU has been awarded an Improvement Science Fellowship by the Health Foundation , one of five appointments to develop and champion a rigorous, scientific approach to improving the quality of healthcare in the emerging field of improvement science. Sonya will be mentored by Martin Utley and by Professor Naomi Fulop of the UCL Department of Applied Health Research and is funded for three years from March 2013, one of several collaborative endeavours between these groups. Christina Pagel 2013-02-04T12:08:07Z Health financing website receives positive feedback! http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/31 Last year, Save the Children launched a health financing website (equitablehealthfinancing.org) designed with the help of Christina Pagel and Martin Utley of CORU and colleagues at the UCL Institute of Global Health . We initially reported on this last year , but now early reviews are in! Preliminary feedback has proven very positive and we are hopeful that this methodology could become a new way to bridge the gap between academic evidence and policy. Christina Pagel 2013-02-04T11:55:26Z CORU article highlights challenges in implementing modelling toolkits http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/30 CORU’s work on the NIHR funded project “ Developing evidence based and acceptable stepped care systems in mental health care: an operational research project ” has highlighted some of the challenges in implementing modelling software and distributing it effectively to healthcare managers. Our work on this has just been published in the Journal of Operational Research. Christina Pagel 2012-10-22T18:39:46Z Number of people living with cancer set to increase significantly http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/29 Martin Utley of CORU contributed to work at Thames Cancer Registry, Kings College London to project the number of people living with or beyond cancer in the coming decades. The work has generated a lot of interest and is described in recent articles in The Guardian and The Independent newspapers and BBC News Online . Christina Pagel 2012-08-20T11:17:59Z CORU's visual outcome monitoring tool (VLAD) goes global! http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/28 Over fifteen years ago, researchers at CORU collaborated with heart surgeons to produce charts that could be used to monitor risk-adjusted outcomes following surgery in a routine manner. These charts are called Variable Life-Adjusted Displays (VLAD) Charts and are now routinely used in cardiac units across the UK and internationally. VLAD Charts have also started to be used to monitor other outcomes, almost always in hospital settings, and almost always in high income contexts. They are most useful for allowing users to quickly spot trends in outcomes that might warrant further investigation or aid understanding of a dataset. Christina Pagel 2012-06-01T16:26:20Z CORU's Skilled Birth Attendance paper is a BMC Highly Accessed paper! http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/26 Our paper on the scale of unattended births over the next five years in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia has become a BMC Highly Accessed paper just over two weeks after its publication!   Christina Pagel 2012-02-07T12:05:29Z CORU projections of skilled birth attendance rates in world's poorest regions published http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/25 Sonya Crowe, Christina Pagel and Martin Utley have been working with Anthony Costello, director of the UCL Insitute of Global Health , to assess the extent to which women in two of the world's poorest regions (South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) will continue to give birth without a skilled birth attendant (SBA). Christina Pagel 2012-01-27T14:25:08Z Marfan aortic aneurysm: Golesworthy wins Healthcare Award http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/24 CORU partner Tal Golesworthy (left in the project team photo below) was awarded The Engineer's Medical & Healthcare Award at The Royal Society.  Golesworthy in 2004 became the first person fitted with the External Aortic Root Support (EARS) implant which he had himself devised. A process engineer, Golesworthy worked with MRI scans, CAD and rapid prototyping technology to design and manufacture the textile external support which has NICE Technology Appraisal in the UK. Christina Pagel 2011-12-07T12:04:40Z Save the Children launch website designed with CORU's help http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/23 Save the Children have just launched a health financing website (equitablehealthfinancing.org) designed with the help of Christina Pagel and Martin Utley of CORU and colleagues at the Centre for International Health and Development . The website aims to help policy makers in low and middle income countries navigate the complex evidence around different ways of financing a health system, especially given the gradual phasing out of fees at point of use. The website uses a variety of methods to summarise the evidence of a rapid literature review, fully exploiting web architecture by including cross-referencing and searchable and sortable tables . Most innovative are new ‘scattar plots' (a combination of scatter and radar) showing a graphical summary of the evidence of impact for different tools (see also figure) where the distance of each study (dot) from the centre depends on how closely the context of that study matches the country of the user. Christina Pagel 2011-10-17T10:56:20Z Attempts at surgical removal are of no benefit to asbestos cancer sufferers finds trial led by CORU's Tom Treasure http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/22 Christina Pagel 2011-07-24T23:32:34Z Pandemic flu countermeasure work published in Vaccine http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/20 CORU's work with the UK Department of Health last year has resulted in a paper 1 published in Vaccine . One of the major complications of flu is pneumonia and it was thought that vaccinating the population against pneumococcal pneumonia at the start of a pandemic might prevent deaths due to complications of flu. We built a mathematical model to investigate the potential effect of such a policy using a variety of estimates over the efficacy of the pneumonia vaccine, the virulence of the flu and the achievable coverage of such a vaccination programme. We found that there were substantial reductions in deaths only under specific circumstances - a virulent flu where most complications were due to pneumococcal pneumonia.  Christina Pagel 2011-06-21T08:57:08Z CORU's work shows effects of selective citation on surgical practice http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/21 Pulmonary metastasectomy for colorectal cancer is a commonly performed and well-established practice of over 50 years standing. The absence of strong evidence, in the form of controlled studies, to support this practice led three of CORU's researchers to investigate the evidence base that has been used in establishing its status as a standard of care. Using citation network analysis on a total of 344 publications, they found frequent use of historical or landmark papers while, on the other hand, the few papers expressing opposing viewpoints were rarely cited (the four papers outside the main citation network in the figure below). They concluded that this citation pattern tends to escalate belief in clinical practice even when it lacks a high-quality evidence base and helps create an impression of more authority than is warranted. Christina Pagel 2011-06-16T14:28:29Z Editorial praises CORU's simple risk stratification model http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/19 CORU's recent work with Papworth Hospital, developing a simple stratification scheme for identfying patients at risk of excessive post-operative bleeding has been published in the European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery (EJCTS) 1 . The work was discussed in an editorial for EJCTS 2 where we were praised for the effort that went into the score and for its easy-to-use nature, facilitating its potential use across several different hospitals.  Christina Pagel 2011-05-25T14:23:12Z Tom Treasure's talk is ranked among top three presentations http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/17 Tom Treasure's presentation at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgery was ranked among the top three at the entire meeting.  admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T15:38:17Z CORU informs national policy on pandemic flu http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/14 CORU has informed UKpolicy on the use of vaccination against pneumonia as a countermeasure to pandemic flu. admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:52Z The Ekjut trial in India is selected as Trial of the Year! http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/16 The Ekjut Trial, which Christina Pagel was a co-author on ( Lancet 2010;375: 1182-92), has been recognised as Trial of the Year by the Society for Clinical Trials .  admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:52Z Christos Vasilakis gives keynote lecture at Young OR 17 conference http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/15 Christos Vasilakis has been invited to give a keynote talk at the biannual Young OR conference in Nottingham this April.  admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:52Z CORU work examines the foundations of triage http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/12 CORU has had its paper examining the foundations of triage published in Critical Care Medicine. admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:53Z Christina Pagel gives invited talk at RCM conference http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/11 Christina Pagel gave an invited talk at the 2010 annual conference of the Royal College of Midwives in Manchester. Her talk was entitled "What is Operational Research and what’s it got to do with health?" admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:53Z Martin Utley gives invited talk at the MASHNET workshop http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/10 Martin Utley gave an invited talk at the MASHNET workshop entitled "More for less: the modeller’s dream or a rude awakening?" in November 2010.  His slides are available from the MASHNET website . admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:53Z Making sense of statistics http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/8 Christina Pagel from CORU is a contributor to a new guide aimed at journalists and the general public called " Making Sense of Statistics ". The guide is published by the charity Sense about Science in collaboration with the Royal Statistical Society. admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:53Z UCL helps engineer to heal his own heart http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/7 Professors at UCL have helped an engineer develop and evaluate a device to repair a defect in his own heart. admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:53Z Christina Pagel has paper published in The Lancet http://www.ucl.ac.uk/operational-research/or-news-publication/6 The findings of a UCL study investigating possible improvements to maternity care in Africa have appeared in the Lancet. The study was conducted by Christina Pagel of CORU, along with Professor Anthony Costello (UCL Institute of Child Health) and colleagues. admin A Christina Pagel 2011-05-19T11:11:53Z