Lateral thinking: Lateral flow test engineering and lessons learned from COVID-19
Dr Jen Barcroft presents her work in collaboration with i-sense colleagues at the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG) World Congress: “Can Online Search Engine Patterns Predict Gynecological Diagnoses?”.
Online search data can help inform the public health response to COVID-19, according to a report from UCL. The data allows experts to predict a peak in cases on average 17 days in advance.
A Nature Medicine review, led by researchers in the EPSRC funded i-sense project, looks at how digital technologies have been mobilised for a global public health response to COVID-19 and the associated concerns with privacy and efficacy in an evolving digital world.
Lead author and Director of i-sense EPSRC IRC at UCL, Prof Rachel McKendry said: “Our review shows that digital technologies have an important role in a comprehensive response to the pandemic, alongside conventional measures.”
Pandemics, such as COVID-19, are usually assumed to spread rapidly within the population. In reality, the population is more heterogeneous with regard to risk, and there will be large variation on the basis of geography, workplace and other key factors.
Analysing data on a national level therefore risks hiding this heterogeneity and compromises the most effective public health response. New analysis from i-sense researchers at University College London suggests COVID-19 has such diverse effects on the different local authorities in the UK.
Led by Prof Molly Stevens, the i-sense team at Imperial College London have received over €500,000 in funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) as part of their COVID-19 Rapid Response Call.
New research from Public Health England and members of i-sense at UCL, published in Environmental Research, suggests that monitoring online search terms related to the health impact of heatwaves could help contribute to public health surveillance systems in the UK and have potential benefits for countries that lack established public health surveillance systems.
On 19 January, i-sense members met at the 5G Innovation Centre in the University of Surrey to discuss and share outputs that have been created as part of i-sense EPSRC IRC, the role that 5G technologies play in the ecosystem, and how they intersect with a range of industry needs.
Postdoctoral Research Associate in the i-sense McKendry group at UCL, Dr Harriet Gliddon, recently travelled to South Africa with the support of a UCL Global Engagement Grant. The visit helped Dr Gliddon plan for a study looking at new sequencing technology to diagnose drug-resistant tuberculosis.
i-sense members from the McKendry group at UCL and the Peeling group at LSHTM attended the week-long Advanced Course on Diagnostics (ACDx), which took place at the Fondation Merieux Centre for Global Health in Annecy.
