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Approved research

Modelling organ function in health and disease

Principal Investigator: Dr Hannah Meyer
Approved Research ID: 58510
Approval date: April 2nd 2020

Lay summary

Knowledge of organ functions guides many decision making processes in assessment of health, disease, and management of disease in the clinic. Almost every patient, who is assessed in hospital has, for example, an estimated value reported for the filtration function of their kidney. However, the organ systems within the body do not work in isolation, but interact and have coordinated function. While isolated measurements and methods to estimate specific aspects of certain organ functions exist, there has not been a comprehensive attempt to model the connectivity of organ function and thereby to improve our understanding of health and disease. The main research question of our work is: Can we build a comprehensive model for multiorgan function using the UK Biobank data? We will determine the answer by using statistical modelling and machine learning approaches, as well as hypothesis driven modelling using clinical, imaging, genetic and lifestyle (e.g., smoking, alcohol use) data in UK Biobank. We intend to discover how to better assess the risks of diseases and the consequences of diseases by learning about their interaction and effect on integrated organ function in patients. The estimated duration of our project is 4-5 years. At the end of the work, we hope to have delivered significant public health impact by providing a new perspective on integrated data analysis in clinical practice. We anticipate to deliver new models for data analysis that will provide a better understanding of health and disease and will enable clinicians to provide better care, including better drug dosing regimen, for patients with a variety of diseases.