On Thursday 3rd May 2018, the Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) at WMG, University of Warwick, will be hosting the Digital Health & Care and Safety of Connected Health: Improvements & Applications Conference (DICOH’18).

The national conference is being sponsored by the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network and NHS Digital.

Professor Maureen Baker CBE, Chair of the Professional Record Standards Body, Dr Cian Hughes Senior Research Scientist, DeepMind and Professor Theo Arvanitis, Chair in e-Health Innovation and Head of Research at WMG will be joining other key experts in digital healthcare speaking at the conference.

There will also be a tutorial on clinical IT safety organised jointly by the Institute of Digital Health and the NHS Digital.

You can get more information or register for DICOH’18 here.

WMG, at the University of Warwick, is a key partner in the Midlands site helping to deliver a £30 million project by Health Data Research UK, to address challenging UK healthcare issues using data science, which is looking at making game-changing improvements in people’s health by harnessing data science at scale across the UK.

WMG will be part of the “Midlands HDR UK Substantive Site”, which will tackle the challenge of how to make NHS data more useable and accessible for research; and will develop, evaluate and apply appropriate analytical tools to NHS data in real time in order to inform decision making and improve health for both the patient and population. The Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH), WMG will lead the Warwick part of the programme, together with colleagues from Warwick Medical School and Warwick’s Mathematics Institute.

Research to help identify women at risk of pregnancy complications is to receive a huge financial boost.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is to give The Tommy's Reproductive Health Biobank a grant of £1.2million.

The biobank will be the most significant collection of reproductive health tissues in the UK. Operating on a virtual basis with its server based at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW) and will begin operating on 29 September. It will store biological samples collected by scientists and clinicians at UHCW, the University of Warwick, University of Birmingham, Imperial College, Kings College London, University of Edinburgh and University of Manchester. The tissues, donated by women who have a history of pregnancy problems, and clinical data will help scientists find new causes and cures for miscarriage, stillbirth, and premature birth.

A study led the University of Warwick suggests that people are reluctant to use public access defibrillators to treat cardiac arrests.

The analysis of existing international studies, which has been published in the European Heart Journal – Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes, suggests that there are a number of factors that prevent members of the public from using them and potentially saving lives.

The researchers’ study suggests that many members of the public don’t know what an automated external defibrillator (AED) is, where to find one and how to use one. This is despite AEDs being suitable for use by untrained members of the public. Although studies suggest there is variation across the studies they analysed in the number of people willing to use an AED a lack of confidence and fear of harm are common themes.

The research, Barriers and facilitators to public access defibrillation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a systematic review, was conducted by Warwick Medical School, the University of Warwick; the Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, the University of Warwick; Heart of England NHS Trust, Birmingham; London Ambulance Service NHS Trust and Imperial College Neurotrauma Centre, St Mary’s Hospital, London.

Our Professor Theo Arvanitis, Chair in e-Health Innovation and Head of Research at our Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH), and his colleagues Omar Khan and Sarah Lim-Choi Keung, were part of the winning Warwick Research Team at the annual University of Warwick awards on Friday (12^th May) night.

The winning team was made up of colleagues from WMG’s IDH, Warwick Medical School and Warwick Computer Science who are working alongside doctors at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire and Tommy’s baby charity on the development of the Tommy’s National Miscarriage Research Centre.

 “The work of the Warwick team is internationally recognised as pioneering and has already delivered new treatment options that are currently being tested in clinical trials. The new Tommy’s centre now enables 24,000 women per year to access treatment and support and participate in Tommy’s research studies. Tommy’s #misCOURAGE campaign continues to grow and resonate with women, attracting a UK and global audience. To date the campaign has reached over 16 million women on Facebook with 7 million of them watching the campaign film; 7,000 taking part in a miscarriage survey and over 1,000 women bravely sharing their personal #misCOURAGE story.”Prof Theo Arvanitis Retweeted Warwick InsiteWell done all for excellent work on Tommy's Research in Miscarriage @IDHwarwick we are proud to be part of the team & unit @TheoArvanitis

Researchers from the University of Warwick’s Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) are using data to help discover why some pregnancies fail.

The initiative is part of the National Tommy’s Centre for Early Miscarriage Care and Research (NEMC) which is the first in the UK - and the largest in Europe. The University of Warwick has been chosen as a partner, together with the University of Birmingham and Imperial College London. The NEMC is funded by Tommy's, the baby and pregnancy charity

The team at IDH is led by Professor Theo Arvanitis, Chair in e-Health Innovation and Head of Research. He said: “Around 250,000 miscarriages occur every year, and roughly a third of women suffer more than one of these traumatic events. We'll also be creating a national database, initially by taking information from all three centres.

The University of Warwick has been selected to be a partner in the largest miscarriage research centre in Europe.

Funded by the leading pregnancy charity, Tommy’s, researchers from the Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) and Warwick Medical School (WMS), will be joining doctors from University Hospital, Coventry to investigate the causes of early miscarriage.

The Institute of Digital Healthcare, at the University of Warwick, will develop a clinical database, led by Professor Theo Arvanitis, to support the work of the Centre and improve on outcomes based on information-driven approaches.

WMG is pleased to welcome Professor Theo Arvanitis today (1st November). He joins the Institute of Digital Healthcare team as Professor of e-Health Innovation.

Professor Arvanitis is a specialist in biomedical engineering, neuroimaging and health informatics. He has a substantial academic publication record with over 300 publications, while he has received research funding from national (UK), European and international governmental funding agencies, charities and industry.

WMG at the University of Warwick has appointed two new Professors who will be taking up key roles and leading research in the fields of E-Health Innovation and Operations and Supply Chain Strategy.

Professor Jan Godsell, a specialist in supply chain management, will be Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy within WMG from the 1^st October and Professor Theo Arvanitis will be joining WMG in November to lead E-Health Innovation as part of the Institute of Digital Healthcare.