Why this Road Builder matters
Data science approaches are key to addressing the major problem of poor mental health in children and young people (CYP). This Road Builder will seek to build on previous MRC Pathfinder successes to develop a joined-up data research infrastructure piloting Scottish and Welsh school data to address poor mental health in children and young people. This will leverage recent developments in schools-based MH research, i.e. the Schools Health Research Network (SHRN), Wales and the Schools Health and Wellbeing Improvement Research Network (SHINE), Scotland.
What we are researching
We are seeking to improve access to and use of SHRN and SHINE data by school communities and wider stakeholders by exploring existing data dashboard products and data user needs and how they might be brought together.
What we hope to achieve
By seeking insights into stakeholder and school attitudes towards data utilisation we want to shape an understanding of data use for schools as learning organisations for health and wellbeing. The longer-term goal is to identify the resources for a UK wide scalable and sustainable school network dashboard to help schools to address poor mental health in children and young people.
Why this Road Builder matters
This Road Builder aims to use administrative data, with its benefit of population coverage, to provide robust effect estimates for smaller vulnerable and underserved populations that are poorly represented in surveys and trials research. Administrative data also offer the opportunity for the creation of e-cohorts at scale, and comparison across jurisdictions with the potential for natural experiments to evaluate policy differences, e.g. arising from devolution, and assess the intersection with deprivation.
What we are researching
This Road Builder will seek to demonstrate how administrative data can enable real world insights into factors impacting on the mental health of underserved populations particularly considering; prisoners, children known to social services, Travellers and ethnic minority communities.
What we hope to achieve
The Road Builder will seek to demonstrate the degree of under representativeness of excluded and under served groups in society, producing case studies of how innovative use of administrative data can help address these imbalances.
Why this Road Builder matters
The premature mortality gap in people with SMI (such as schizophrenia) is a major health inequality which has been exposed using UK routine clinical data. This RB will facilitate a step change to determine the socio-demographic, biological, pharmacological, and health care pathways implicated in the excess of deaths and multimorbidity in those with SMI, often an excluded population.
What we are researching
Using cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors as an exemplar, we will seek to report on data availability and ability to assess CVD risk in SMI across all four nations in the first instance. We will also attempt to clarify a SMI definition across the four nations, which has been identified as a gap in current research.
What we hope to achieve
The Road Builder will seek to facilitate specialist data curation and cataloguing to provide a UK wide platform for research across the spectrum of MH disorders to enable the ability to assess the impact of physical health conditions on mental health.
Why this Road Builder matters
Electronic Health Records (EHR) have the potential to support mental health (MH) research; however, most information on symptoms, treatments and outcomes is recorded in text fields. Information on the patient’s social context is also recorded in text. Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms have been developed to enable this text to be used for EHR-based research; however, this capability needs expanding if EHR data resources are to be improved at a national level. The commercial sector also faces challenges in algorithm development as IP and commercial confidentiality concerns may preclude handling of algorithms by healthcare/academic partners. Current blockages to algorithm development and implementation significantly impedes MH research using EHR data.
What we are researching
The Road Builder seeks to build on the work of the King’s College London MRC Pathfinder programme, which successfully delivered its NLP functionality to other academic MH Trusts (e.g., Cambridge, UCL), and which built an Azure-hosted prototype platform, the MH Text Analytics Cloud (MH-TAC). This enables secure hosting of algorithms for providers as well as NHS-compliant transfer and processing of EHR text. This Road Builder will support the development and implementation of a service to support this resource.
What we hope to achieve
As a result of this Road Builder, we hope that text-derived data infrastructures can be realised in MH more widely, unlocking the potential for multi-site EHR-based research in this field – i.e., the simple principle that information from health records can be used to increase knowledge about MH conditions and improve clinical care.
Why this Road Builder matters
The Mental Health Research Framework specifically identified that the routine capture of mental health (MH) data in physical health studies was a critical area to address. There currently exists significant gaps in data collected by NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) across its clinical portfolio (850,000 participants per year) relating to information about participants’ MH and wellbeing.
What we are researching
This RB has two strands:
- Development of a core MH dataset tool for existing and new NIHR CRN portfolio studies in physical health to enable the routine capture of MH data across the CRN portfolio
- Development of an equity audit tool prototypes to enable identification of specific underserved groups.
What we hope to achieve
We will make discoverable a valuable new research resource to understand the links between mental and physical health, enhancing our understanding of co- and multimorbidity. The equity audit tool prototypes will aim to enable identification of specific underserved groups within the NIHR MH portfolio as a whole and within individual MH clinical trials helping to improve planning for future recruitment and identify regional variation in disease burden and outcomes.
Why this Road Builder matters
The lack of new and more effective drug treatments for MH disorders continues to perpetuate their associated global disability. There has been a relative lack of potential drug targets, and few studies to enable existing drugs to be targeted to new indications or to the individuals most likely to benefit. This has discouraged commercial investment in MH treatment research, perpetuating the current impasse in drug development. While there are many challenges, our growing molecular understanding of MH disorders means this is also a time of unparalleled opportunity for re-engaging industry.
What we are researching
Engagement with pharma, biotech and other organisations is a key goal of this Road Builder; with the establishment of an Industry Forum to support the development of discussions on drug discovery. Engagement with patients and the public is also critical to identify their attitudes toward industry and set guidelines for generating trust and confidence in planned work, so this RB will work in tandem to develop a framework for the approved use of data in research.
What we hope to achieve
We seek to facilitate a common understanding of the drug development process and provide a framework for trusted collaboration and research. Our work involves working with patients, the public, NHS and industry to identify and address existing impediments to drug development with the goal of developing more effective treatments.