About the project
Children and young people who sustain acquired brain injury (ABI) often recover after rehabilitation, but some develop a Prolonged Disorder of Consciousness (PDOC). This project will develop the necessary predictive capacity to allow early identification of patients who could benefit from novel PDOC treatments, to enable targeted intervention via personalised care.
The aim of this project is to use artificial intelligence (AI), mathematical and stochastic modelling to develop tools for personalised outcome prediction in children with acquired brain injury (ABI) within weeks of their admission to neurorehabilitation. This will permit the application of personalised health care and ensure that patients likely to benefit are targeted to receive novel treatments, but that such treatments are not applied to patients unnecessarily. You will investigate the combination of Markovian and machine learning models to describe rehabilitation pathways of paediatric patients with ABI, using successive measures of the King’s Outcome Scale for Children with Head Injury (KOSCHI) - a generic outcome score, together with demographic measures, and information about the patients underlying condition and rehabilitation complexity and dependency during neurorehabilitation. By undertaking this project, you will be part of an exciting partnership between the University of Southampton (Centre for Healthcare Analytics (CfHA) and Centre for Operational Research, Management Science and Information Sciences – CORMSIS, Dr. Edilson Arruda and Prof. Selin Ahipasaoglu); the University Hospitals of Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (Department of Paediatric Neurorehabilitation, Dr Peta Sharples); and members of the British Paediatric Neurology Association (BPNA) Neurorehabilitation Special Interest Group. You will learn to work with a team of interdisciplinary researchers with diverse background to design personalised health care delivery – one of the NHS’s five major priorities for the next 10 years. It is an opportunity to boost your employability prospects and to develop into a complete researcher with a singular analytical and problem-solving skill set.
You will also be supervised by organisations other than the University of Southampton, including Dr Peta Sharples, Consultant Paediatric Neurologist and Consultant Lead for Rehabilitation, from Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.
