CBCU Research

This page summarises earlier research carried out in association with CBCU by various clinical fellows, other co-workers and students and commercial partners. It also provides a link to an A–Z listing of previous projects.

Clinical fellows

Several clinically qualified students and junior medical staff have held the Biomedical Computing Clinical Fellowship over the years. The aim of the fellowship was to enable them to explore an area of biomedical computing compatible with the general interests of CBCU and their own clinical specialty.

Mark Radon

[February – August 2005, January 2001]

Mark first joined CBCU while a medical student on the Cambridge Clinical Course and developed software to support the educational activities of the unit and undertook a personal project to build a small circuit board ECG machine which plugged into the audio port of the computer. After qualifying, Mark entered a radiology training programme, and spent a further six months in 2005 with CBCU, developing online teaching resources to support radiology and other forms of teaching.

Brian Rous

[August 2001 – February 2003]

Brian is currently an Specialist Registrar in Histopathology on the Eastern Training Programme who spent one year in CBCU developing an image data base and teaching programme for diagnostic histopathology. The TAPIR (Teaching Archive of Pathology Image Resources) contains more than 3000 images, both macroscopic and microscopic pathology, along with clinical details. The images are catalogued by the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and can be linked to other teaching applications. The resource is now used by the National Training Schools for Histopathology and supports undergraduate education in the University of Cambridge. Brian also produced a number of pieces of work on the legal and ethical uses of pathology resources for teaching and research.

References

• Tranberg, H., Rous, B.A. and Rashbass, J. (2003) Legal and ethical issues in the use of anonymous images in Pathology Teaching and Research. Histopathology 42, 104–110
• Rous, B.A. and Rashbass, J. (2002) What Can Internet Technology Add to Pathology Education? Histopathology 41 S2, 216–221.

Ari Ercole

[2001 – 2004]

Ari has a background in physics, both as an undergraduate and graduate student, and a Masters degree in Economics, and has worked with CBCU on several projects. While training as a medical student in Cambridge, he worked in CBCU on mathematical techniques for detecting collusion in online examinations, which were subsequently extended to analyse payment information for ophthalmic services in the NHS. During his elective period, he wrote software capable of capturing information from medical devices to allow remote monitoring of patients either in intensive care or the emergency room. He is currently completing his pre-registration houseman year.

References

• Ercole, A., Whittlestone, K.D., Melvin, D.G. and Rashbass, J. (2002) Collusion detection in multiple choice examinations Medical Education 36, 166–172

Mohammad Ubaydli

[1998 – 2002]

Mo was closely associated with CBCU for several years and initially joined CBCU as a Part II student in Immunology when he developed the Immunosim mathematical and computational model for simulating lymphocyte interaction (see below). For this work he was awarded the final year prize in immunology.
During his clinical training he developed the early prototypes for the medical knowledge base to help students collect and correlate clinical information. Once he had qualified he (in partnership with Laura Dean) joined CBCU on a project funded by the Hewlett Packard Corporation to look at the use of hand-held devices for medical students developing a collaborative learning environment for sharing and exchanging information. The lessons learnt from this project are described in the Project Palm Report. Since then Mo has authored a well-regarded book on hand-held computers for doctors and both he and Laura Dean are now visiting Research Fellows at the National Centre for Biotechnology Information at the National Institute for Health.

Software

• Ubaydli, M. and Rashbass, J. (1999) Immunosim. A computer-based system for modelling cellular int. Java NT/85/98 Mac Unix
• Ubaydli, M. and Rashbass, J. (1999) Medical Knowledge-base. An automatically cross-linked database of diseases and their clinical features. JAVA Windows

Steve Casson

[1998]

Steve was a final year medical student who joined CBCU for a year to develop a hand-held, history taking device based on an early Psion mobile tablet PC. He developed a method for recording structured clinical histories and examinations and made some progress towards linkage with laboratory results and therapeutic interventions. The device was used at Addenbrooke’s and formed the basis of a structured history taking programme to support medical student training. Steve has since qualified in medicine and then trained as a computer programmer. He is now employed by in the NHS Connecting for Health Programme by the Local Service Provider, Accenture.

Software

• Casson, S. and Rashbass, J. (1999) UMLS Java Query Engine. Unified Medical Language System Query Engine. JAVA (1.1)
• Casson, S. and Rashbass, J. (1999) Mobile History Tablet. Patient Data-Capture using Hand-held Computers. JAVA (1.1) All (see above)

Other co-workers
and students

Radoslav Nespor

[Summer 2005 & 2004]

Radoslav, a computer science student at Cambridge University, spent a summer vacation working with CBCU and the Cancer Registry to develop a web delivery system for cancer incidence and mortality data. The work led to the development of a prototype on NHSnet that allows authenticated users to retrieve cancer epidemiology information for a wide range of tumours by Primary Care Trust, Acute Trust or Health Authority. He continued this work during his summer vacation in 2005, which should form the basis of a service available to the NHS and possibly the public.

Heidi Tranberg

[2002 – 2004]

Trained as a lawyer in Australia, Heidi spent a year working in CBCU on legal and ethical issues of electronic health records. Together with Jem Rashbass, she authored a book on the legal framework for access and use of medical information and how this can be used to support medical research and clinical practice. The book was published in May 2004. Heidi also contributed to several articles on the use of pathology images and resources for research, teaching and clinical practice. This work also informed the General Medical Councils Policy Paper on the use of clinical images.

References

• Tranberg, H. and Rashbass, J. (2004) Medical Records, Use and Abuse. Radcliffe Medical Publishing
• Tranberg, H., Rous, B.A. and Rashbass, J. (2003) Legal and ethical issues in the use of anonymous images in Pathology Teaching and Research. Histopathology 42, 104–110

MIT research students

[Summer 2002]

Three students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology joined CBCU as part of the Undergraduate Research Programme (UROP): David Broniatowski developed a fingerprint authentication module that would work with smartcard technologies to ensure both strong authentication and biometric recognition for use with hand-held devices and Jennifer Shu and Priya Agrawal developed applications to access the new SNOMED CT coding vocabulary.

Ian Munro

[1998]

Ian is an advanced practitioner in cytology who I supervised for a Masters degree. This one-year degree course project evaluated the use of computer-generated images to test and train screeners in gynaecological cytology. As well as forming the basis of a potential training tool for cytologists, the technology also allowed a direct comparison on the features used by cytologists of differing levels of expertise. Ian successfully submitted his thesis and is now the lead for the Eastern Regional Cytology Training School.

Commercial partners

Cable and Wireless

Supported the development of an international telemedicine link between Addenbrooke’s NHS Trust and the island of Montserrat following the volcanic eruption in 1997.

Hewlett Packard Corporation

Supported for a project to investigate learning strategies for use with portable devices – led to Project Palm.

Hutchison Telecom

Supported a 2-year fellowship programme to investigate the development of clinical resources accessible using 3G mobile phone technologies. Led to the delivery of British National Formulary by mobile phone and a pathology results reporting system based upon SMS.

Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Press

See the development of web delivery software for the British National Formulary

BMJ Publishing Group

See the development of web delivery software for the British National Formulary

 

Cambridge University Press

See the development of Expert Reviews in Molecular Medicine

 

Qinetiq

Supported mechanisms for data analysis and interpretation of cancer information.

Karen worked as a graphic and website designer for ECRIC and is now freelance.

Graduating from Writtle College/University of Hertfordshire with a degree in Amenity Horticulture Karen ran a garden design/landscaping business before orientating her design skills towards the web and other media. For the last ten years she been involved in various e-learning projects for the University of Cambridge/NHS and a sprinkling of private commissions.

Graham Phillips was the Chief Technology Officer at the Eastern Cancer Registration and Information Centre, where he worked setting up a new database with web access and introducing the use of web services for exchange of data and rules among cancer registries. Previously, Graham developed an online learning system for use in the School of Clinical Medicine at Cambridge University. He has a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Strathclyde, and has worked on embedded software for active implantable medical devices.

See also

A–Z listing of previous projects – for more detail on individual research projects.