Questions to Predict Disease Risk (RISQ)

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    PREDICTING RISK OF DISEASE USING DETAILED QUESTIONNAIRES (RISQ)

  • IRAS ID

    262349

  • Contact name

    Laurence Lovat

  • Contact email

    l.lovat@ucl.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University College London

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    9 years, 11 months, 31 days

  • Research summary

    This study aims to create a low-cost predictive tool that (a) accurately identifies individuals with low risk of developing the disease of interest (we will start with oesophageal and colorectal cancer) so that they can be saved from the burden of expensive, invasive, and unpleasant examination and (b) identifies patients at high risk of developing these diseases so that they can be treated by minimally invasive techniques and avoid getting the disease at all.\n\nThis is an observational cohort study. A ‘symptom and risk factor’ questionnaire will be developed based on known symptoms and risk factors for the diseases being studied. Patients will be selected in order to identify a series of groups with different risk profiles to compare and the presumed or confirmed diagnosis for each patient will be recorded. Novel artificial intelligence techniques will be used to analyse the questionnaire response data to identify highly accurate profiles to predict the presence of both disease and disease risk. Once we have confirmed this accuracy, we aim to create a cheap and quick screening test, so that only high-risk patients will in future need to undergo invasive investigations. This will save the NHS and other healthcare systems worldwide significant amounts of money, while saving patients across the world time, inconvenience and reducing their risk of complications from unnecessary investigations.\n

  • REC name

    South Central - Oxford B Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    19/SC/0382

  • Date of REC Opinion

    9 Sep 2019

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion