Cochrane is a British international charitable organisation formed to synthesize medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health professionals,patients and policy makers. It includes 53 review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide. Cochrane has approximately 30,000 volunteer experts from around the world.
Health informatics is the study and implementation of computer structures and algorithms to improve communication,understanding,and management of medical information. It can be viewed as a branch of engineering and applied science.
Ben Michael Goldacre is a British physician,academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford. He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials,aiming to require open science practices in clinical trials.
Kamran Abbasi is the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ),a physician,visiting professor at the Department of Primary Care and Public Health,Imperial College,London,editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine(JRSM),journalist,cricket writer and broadcaster,who contributed to the expansion of international editions of the BMJ and has argued that medicine cannot exist in a political void.
Sir Iain Geoffrey Chalmers is a British health services researcher,one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration,and coordinator of the James Lind Initiative,which includes the James Lind Library and James Lind Alliance.
A lateral flow test (LFT),is an assay also known as a lateral flow device (LFD),lateral flow immunochromatographic assay,or rapid test. It is a simple device intended to detect the presence of a target substance in a liquid sample without the need for specialized and costly equipment. LFTs are widely used in medical diagnostics in the home,at the point of care,and in the laboratory. For instance,the home pregnancy test is an LFT that detects a specific hormone. These tests are simple and economical and generally show results in around five to thirty minutes. Many lab-based applications increase the sensitivity of simple LFTs by employing additional dedicated equipment. Because the target substance is often a biological antigen,many lateral flow tests are rapid antigen tests.
The Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of health research Network is an international initiative aimed at promoting transparent and accurate reporting of health research studies to enhance the value and reliability of medical research literature. The EQUATOR Network is hosted by the University of Oxford,and was established with the goals of raising awareness of the importance of good reporting of research,assisting in the development,dissemination and implementation of reporting guidelines for different types of study designs,monitoring the status of the quality of reporting of research studies in the health sciences literature,and conducting research relating to issues that impact the quality of reporting of health research studies. The Network acts as an "umbrella" organisation,bringing together developers of reporting guidelines,medical journal editors and peer reviewers,research funding bodies,and other key stakeholders with a mutual interest in improving the quality of research publications and research itself. The EQUATOR Network comprises five centres at the University of Oxford,Bond University,Paris Descartes University,Ottawa Hospital Research Institute,and Hong Kong Baptiste University.
Population impact measures (PIMs) are biostatistical measures of risk and benefit used in epidemiological and public health research. They are used to describe the impact of health risks and benefits in a population,to inform health policy.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a technology to enable monitoring of patients outside of conventional clinical settings,such as in the home or in a remote area,which may increase access to care and decrease healthcare delivery costs. RPM involves the constant remote care of patients by their physicians,often to track physical symptoms,chronic conditions,or post-hospitalization rehab.
StatsDirect is a statistical software package designed for biomedical,public health,and general health science uses. The second generation of the software was reviewed in general medical and public health journals.
Andrew Julian Vickers is a biostatistician and attending research methodologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Since 2013,he has also been professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is the statistical editor for the peer-reviewed journal European Urology.
John Gordon Williams is a British health services researcher and clinical academic gastroenterologist. He led the establishment of the Postgraduate Medical School in Swansea,created and developed the Health Informatics Unit at the Royal College of Physicians,and was the founding president of WAGE,the Welsh Association for Gastroenterology and Endoscopy Williams was appointed a CBE for services to medicine in 2014.
The Zoe Health Study,formerly the COVID Symptom Study,is a health research project of British company Zoe Limited which uses a mobile app that runs on Android and iOS.
Azeem Majeed is a Professor and Head of the Department of Primary Care &Public Health at Imperial College,London,as well as a general practitioner in South London and a consultant in public health. In the most recent UK University Research Excellence Framework results,Imperial College London was the highest ranked university in the UK for the quality of research in the “Public Health,Health Services and Primary Care”unit of assessment.
Gabriel John Scally FFPHM is an Irish public health physician and a former regional director of public health (RDPH) for the south west of England. He is a visiting professor of public health at the University of Bristol and is a member of the Independent SAGE group,formed during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He has also been chair of the trustees of the Soil Association. Previously he was professor of public health and planning,and director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments,both at the University of the West of England (UWE). He was president of the Section of Epidemiology and Public Health of the Royal Society of Medicine,a position he took in 2017.
Long COVID or long-haul COVID is a group of health problems persisting or developing after an initial period of COVID-19 infection. Symptoms can last weeks,months or years and are often debilitating. The World Health Organization defines long COVID as starting three months after the initial COVID-19 infection,but other agencies define it as starting at four weeks after the initial infection.
The AbC-19 rapid antibody test is an immunological test for COVID-19 exposure developed by the UK Rapid Test Consortium and manufactured by Abingdon Health. It uses a lateral flow test to determine whether a person has IgG antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The test uses a single drop of blood obtained from a finger prick and yields results in 20 minutes. The sensitivity of this test is 98.03% while the specificity is 99.56%. This test is paired with an easy-to-use mobile app which allows a trained professional to generate an antibody test certificate for storing on a person's smartphone.
Nisreen Ala-Din A. S. Alwan MBE is a British–Iraqi public health researcher who is a professor of Public Health at the University of Southampton. Her research considers maternal and child health. During the COVID-19 pandemic,Alwan used social media to communicate public health messages and to call for long covid to be counted and measured. In 2020,Alwan was selected as one of the BBC's top 100 Women.
COVID-19 rapid antigen tests or RATs,also frequently called COVID-19 lateral flow tests or LFTs,are rapid antigen tests used to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19). They are quick to implement with minimal training,cost a fraction of other forms of COVID-19 testing,and give users a result within 5–30 minutes. RATs have been used in several countries as part of mass testing or population-wide screening approaches. Many RATs can be used for self-testing,in which an individual "collects their own specimen…and interpret[s] their test result themselves".
Acoustic epidemiology refers to the study of the determinants and distribution of disease. It also refers to the analysis of sounds produced by the body through a single tool or a combination of diagnostic tools.
