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Manchester academic shares in winning NHS Innovation Challenge Prize

09 Dec 2013

An honorary research fellow in Biostatistics at The University of Manchester, has helped an NHS Trust team to scoop an NHS Innovation Challenge Award.

Dr Stephan Rudolfer, Honorary Research Fellow in Biostatistics, Centre for Biostatistics, Institute of Population Health, was part of the successful East Kent Hospitals University NHS Trust team which won the accolade and £50,000 prize money. This team was led by Dr Jeremy Bland, Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital and Kings College Hospital in London.

Dr Rudolfer has been working with Dr Jeremy Bland and Dr Peter Weller, Senior Lecturer in Medical Informatics and Head of the Centre for Health Informatics, City University, London, on a project comparing the sophisticated techniques of Logistic Regression (LR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in the diagnosis of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS).  CTS is considered to be a major contributor to lost productivity in the workplace, with nearly 1.1 million workdays lost last year.

Their research has resulted in the setting-up of the CTS website which includes a self-diagnosis questionnaire. Patients suspecting they may have CTS can complete this online questionnaire. Their answers about their symptoms are then fed into the previously developed LR and ANN, resulting in the computation of the probability of CTS. Those most likely to have CTS should achieve higher probabilities than those whose symptoms have some other cause.  The result can be used to filter referrals to dedicated  ‘one-stop’ clinics for carpal tunnel syndrome such as that run by Dr Bland in East Kent, reducing the number of inappropriate referrals to these clinics and reducing workload.

The project’s prize-winning factors were

  1. This is thought to be the first validated self-diagnosis tool to be made available to the public online using such sophisticated analytical methods, not only in the NHS, but also worldwide;
  2. The high quality of its website design;
  3. The way it fits into an integrated pathway to treat CTS and acts as an example approach for other conditions;
  4. The software is freely available, giving it the potential for use in the diagnosis of other conditions in the future.

Results from the pilot study are promising, with questionnaire scores from the website showing high accuracy at the initial assessment stage when compared with the final clinical diagnosis

Feedback from those who have taken part in the study so far has also been positive with regards to their initial diagnosis and follow-up.

Implementation of this tool has the potential of substantially reducing NHS costs in both man-hours and equipment. The team’s success with this project is a further step in the path towards NHS clients using self-help tools.