Researcher profile

Atul Anand

I am interested in the use of routine health and social care data to improve outcomes for older people. This is in line with my clinical work as a consultant geriatrician at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. I am the clinical data lead for the DataLoch programme – a data repository of health and social care data in South East Scotland – that is improving access to research-ready datasets for the region. I am interested in understanding the impact of multimorbidity in our population, and refining the way we establish the presence of chronic health conditions from electronic health records. I lead a NIHR/EPSRC development award for Systems Engineering and Thinking To Transform Transitions (SET4) in health and social care for people living with multimorbidity. Additionally, I am a co-investigator on the AIM-CISC Programme (AI in Multimorbidity: Clustering in Individuals, Space and Clinical Context) in which we are better defining multiple long-term conditions using datasets from across the UK. I am also interested in the use of routine electronic health records in hospital to identify frailty and rehabilitation needs. I have developed a tool that was used to triage patient care of frail older adults at Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are currently developing a tool to predict rehabilitation need from hospital data available early in an admission. My PhD assessed the role of cardiac biomarkers in providing objective evidence of disease control in aortic stenosis, where many older patients have complex symptomology due to multimorbidity. I retain a wider interest in the impact of cardiovascular disease on older adults, and have been a co-investigator on the HighSTEACS and HiSTORIC cluster randomised trials. I am a passionate advocate for these methodologies to improve representation and inclusion of older people in clinical trials.