OPTIMAL
Research type
Research Study
Full title
OPTIMising therapies, disease trajectories, and AI assisted clinical management for patients Living with complex multimorbidity (OPTIMAL study)
IRAS ID
277932
Contact name
Thomas Jackson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Birmingham
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
RG_22-041, Sponsor's Reference number
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 2 days
Research summary
This summary describes the overall OPTIMAL work package referred to in section A5-2
We treat each disease separately. This means we prescribe a different drug for each condition, which may not help people with multiple long-term health problems. There’s little information on the effect of one drug on a second disease. This means we are not sure which drug to prescribe in these people.
We can group such people based on their mixes of disease. Then we can study the effects of a drug on each disease mix. This should help doctors prescribe better and reduce the number of drugs patients need.
We aim to:
• Find the mix of diseases and drug treatments that interact over time to worsen or improve a patient’s health.
• With input from lay people and health professionals, produce computer programs to help doctors improve the choice of drugs in patients with multiple health conditions.How will we do this?
1. Use artificial intelligence (AI) methods with electronic health records, model how the different mixes of diseases arise over time and how certain drugs can make this better or worse.
2. Ask lay people and doctors about their knowledge and views of AI guided clinical choice making. This will help us make these models better to use in practice (current application)
3. Use AI computer techniques to combine data, and together with the input from lay people and doctors, develop a computer program. This will predict which drug we should give to someone with multiple health conditions to reduce the risk of harm and bring about maximum benefit. It will also tell us what disease people may get next.
4. Examine the best way to present information in the computer program to lay people and doctors by asking them about what is important to them and what options they prefer.Please note - Further research – semi-structured interviews and discrete choice experiment
There will be some further research including semi-structured interviews using the same participants (people with multiple health conditions and healthcare professionals) where this is possible. The content of interviews is partly dependent on the findings from the first set of interviews but will build upon this further.
There is also an on-line survey that will developed based on the findings from the semi-structured interviews. This will be an anonymised survey sent to people with multiple health conditions and healthcare professionals.
This is in the process of development, full details of which will be submitted as an amendment.REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/SC/0210
Date of REC Opinion
19 Jul 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion