Iain Buchan Explained

Iain Edward Buchan
Occupation:Public health physician, data scientist and academic
Awards:Florence Nightingale Award, Royal Statistical Society (2023)
Alwyn-Smith Medal, Faculty of Public Health (2022)
Education:BSc (hons)., Pharmacology (1989)
MB ChB., Medicine (1991)
MD., Computational statistics (2000)
Alma Mater:University of Liverpool
University of Cambridge
Workplaces:University of Liverpool

Iain Edward Buchan is a public health physician, data scientist and academic. He holds the W.H. Duncan Chair of Public Health Systems and is Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Liverpool.[1]

Buchan's research focuses on health data science and informatics to enable better prevention, early intervention, and value of care for patients and populations. He has written 337 articles and his work has been cited of 26000 times according to Google Scholar. He is most known for leading the world's first evaluation of mass rapid antigen testing,[2] and the first realistic risk-mitigated reopening of mass events during the UK's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[3] He also developed the Civic Data Cooperative,[4] which resulted in the Combined Intelligence for Population Health Action (CIPHA) system during the pandemic.[5] He is the recipient of HTN Health Tech Award,[6] Alwyn-Smith Medal,[7] and Florence Nightingale Award.[8]

Buchan is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, the American College of Medical Informatics,[9] British Computer Society and the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.[10] He has also been an advisor to UK, European and international health policy groups,[11] AstraZeneca[12]) and research organizations including UKRI, Wellcome Trust and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), for which he is a Senior Investigator.[13]

Education and early career

In the 1980s, Buchan pursued medical training alongside studies in pharmacology and statistical software development. As an undergraduate, he published the first version of a statistical package called "StatsDirect." During the 1990s, as a junior doctor, he researched care pathways, health system dynamics, and care inequities. Later, he trained as a public health consultant while conducting research in medical informatics and pursuing doctoral studies in computational statistics.[14]

Career

Buchan began his academic career in 1992 as an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at the University of Liverpool. He then served as a Research Associate in Medical Informatics at the University of Cambridge in 1996 and Senior Research Fellow in Medical Informatics at Wolfson College, Cambridge in 1997, before training as a Consultant in Public Health. In 2003, he joined the University of Manchester as a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Public Health Intelligence and was promoted in 2008 to Clinical Professor in Public Health Informatics.[15] There, from 2003 to 2017, he founded Health eResearch Centre[16] and co-directed the Farr Institute.[17] In the E-Science movement of the early 2000s he conceived e-Labs and Research Objects,[18] leading to today's Trusted Research Environments and applications in healthcare.[19] At Manchester, he also invented the FARSITE system,[20] helping spin out NW eHealth,[21] and started the #DataSavesLives movement and the Connected Health Cities project.[22]

Subsequently, Buchan served as Director of Healthcare Research at Microsoft Research Cambridge in 2017–2018, producing two patents[23] [24] and furthering the health avatar framework he had conceived eight years earlier.[25]

In 2018, Buchan returned to Liverpool as the University of Liverpool's first chair in Public Health and Clinical Informatics.[1] From 2019 to 2022, he was the founding Executive Dean of the Institute of Population Health at Liverpool, whilst leading research responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.[2] [3] Since 2022, he has been conducting multidisciplinary research partnerships, especially in health technology[26] as Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Innovation.[1]

Research

Buchan's research areas encompass public health, data science, clinical informatics, epidemiology, and biostatistics. In particular, he has published in areas related to public health challenges, such as inequalities, obesity, mental health and pandemic resilience, and in methodology, including machine learning in epidemiology, research objects in e-science, learning health systems, and the concept of a digital twin/health avatar for healthcare.[27]

COVID-19 response and data-intensive public health research

Buchan led the world's first evaluation of voluntary mass testing for the SARS-CoV2 antigen with lateral flow devices, working with the British Army, local and national government, public health agencies and the UK's National Health Service.[2] This work provided quick proof that lateral flow devices worked as expected to detect people infected with the COVID-19 virus whether they had symptoms or not.[28] Responding to media debate over the reliability of lateral flow devices, he clarified the evidence regarding a public health test versus a clinical test for COVID-19.[29] The impact of this testing was that COVID-19 hospital admissions fell by 43% initially and 25% overall.[30] The BMJ asked him and colleagues for an accompanying methodology paper on the data analysis as a blueprint of best practice.[31] The UK's universal access community testing policy was shaped by this work, including its demonstration of inequalities in testing uptake and barriers such as digital poverty.[32] He had also formulated a test-to-release daily testing alternative to quarantine for close contacts of cases,[33] which resulted in the Daily Contact Testing policy.[34] He also researched COVID-19 and informed policies in other contexts including care homes,[35] hospitals,[36] schools,[37] and vaccination.[38]

In Spring 2021, Buchan applied previous testing and other COVID-19 risk mitigation research to address the issue of young people being vaccinated last and missing out on social development opportunities due to the continued lockdown of significant cultural events.[39] So, he led a city-scale reopening (after COVID-19 lockdowns) of a cluster of business, nightclub and a music festival events – resulting in minimal SARS-CoV-2 transmission, high levels of enjoyment, low levels of fear over risks, and demonstrated the effectiveness of collaborative strategies for health security at mass cultural gatherings.[40]

Public health and data science

Buchan's research has underscored the importance of trust in health data utilization, highlighting transparency, consent, and public involvement,[41] with a specific focus on the role of national governments in the reuse of health data.[42] Building on earlier work in civic data linkage and public health intelligence,[18] [22] he established the first Civic Data Cooperative in Liverpool in late 2019,[4] and put a National Grid of Civic Data Cooperatives forward to the UK Government as means of improving health system innovation and resilience.[43]

Buchan engaged machine learning researchers from Microsoft Research in the field of epidemiology, leading to discoveries pertaining to asthma and allergies.[44] [45] Most recently, he formed the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre of the UK Government's Mental Health Mission.[26]

Buchan conducted research on other health data science directions including Trusted/Trustworthy Research Environments with Research Objects[19] and eLab networks to improve research reproducibility and tackle the widespread problem of calibration drift in clinical prediction models.[46] He drew attention to the problem of multimorbidity and the need for a unified modelling approach, not only for discovery science but also for personalized care via interactive Health Avatars.[25]

Some of Buchan's most highly cited papers arose from applications of his statistical software to public health problems.[47] He has worked to make better use of routine health record data with combined biostatistics and machine learning approaches to predicting clinical outcomes.[48]

Buchan's data science research has focused on addressing public health challenges, including obesity, inequalities, mental health, and pandemics. He raised a warning over obesity among pre-school children using routinely collected data,[49] then alerted to the high burden of cancer attributable to obesity,[50] then highlighted the challenges of using consumer technology data to understand weight control.[51] He drew attention to the excess of premature deaths in North compared with South England and the need for regional growth incentives.[52] [53] [54] [55]

Awards and honors

Selected articles

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Security - University of Liverpool. www.liverpool.ac.uk.
  2. Web site: Liverpool Covid-SMART Pilot - Research - University of Liverpool. www.liverpool.ac.uk.
  3. Web site: Study shows UK led way in reopening big cultural events safely after Covid lockdowns - University of Liverpool News. Jennifer. Morgan. June 23, 2023.
  4. Web site: About. Civic Data Cooperative.
  5. Web site: CIPHA health data platform and University partner BiVictriX Therapeutics triumph at Bionow awards. October 26, 2022. Civic Data Cooperative.
  6. Web site: CIPHA - News. www.cipha.nhs.uk.
  7. Web site: Liverpool professors recognised by the Faculty of Public Health - Articles - School of Life Sciences - University of Liverpool. www.liverpool.ac.uk.
  8. Web site: Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Healthcare Data Analytics: 2023 winners. RSS.
  9. Web site: Iain Buchan, MD FFPH FFCI FACMI | AMIA - American Medical Informatics Association. amia.org.
  10. Web site: Iain Buchan. June 8, 2021. The Conversation.
  11. Web site: Iain Buchan | HSJ Digital Transformation Summit. digitaltransformation.hsj.co.uk.
  12. Web site: Connected medicines through innovations in data science and AI. 14 June 2023 .
  13. Web site: NIHR Senior Investigators 2023. www.nihr.ac.uk.
  14. Web site: The development of a statistical computer software resource for medical research. Iain Edward. Buchan. August 28, 2000. ethos.bl.uk.
  15. Web site: Iain Buchan. Research Explorer The University of Manchester.
  16. Web site: HeRC Director named as Mbassador - a Global Ambassador. February 9, 2016. HeRC.
  17. Hemingway . Harry . Lyons . Ronan . Li . Qianrui . Buchan . Iain . Ainsworth . John . Pell . Jill . Morris . Andrew . national initiative in data science for health: an evaluation of the UK Farr Institute . International Journal of Population Data Science . 8 April 2020 . 5 . 1 . 1128 . 10.23889/ijpds.v5i1.1128 . 32935051 . 7480324 .
  18. Combining Health Data Uses to Ignite Health System Learning. J.. Ainsworth. I.. Buchan. August 28, 2015. Methods of Information in Medicine. 54. 6. 479–487. 10.3414/ME15-01-0064. 26395036. 20589271 . free.
  19. Bechhofer . Sean . Buchan . Iain . De Roure . David . Missier . Paolo . Ainsworth . John . Bhagat . Jiten . Couch . Philip . Cruickshank . Don . Delderfield . Mark . Dunlop . Ian . Gamble . Matthew . Michaelides . Danius . Owen . Stuart . Newman . David . Sufi . Shoaib . Goble . Carole . Why linked data is not enough for scientists . Future Generation Computer Systems . February 2013 . 29 . 2 . 599–611 . 10.1016/j.future.2011.08.004 .
  20. Ainsworth . John . Buchan . Iain . Preserving consent-for-consent with feasibility-assessment and recruitment in clinical studies: FARSITE architecture . Studies in Health Technology and Informatics . 2009 . 147 . 137–148 . 19593052 .
  21. Web site: Data selection.
  22. Web site: Home | Connected Health Cities Impact Report. Connected Health Cit.
  23. Web site: Gathering data in a communication system.
  24. Web site: Gathering data in a communication system.
  25. A Unified Modeling Approach to Data-Intensive Healthcare. Iain. Buchan. John. Winn. Christopher. Bishop. January 1, 2009. The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery. www.microsoft.com.
  26. Web site: M-RIC - Faculty of Health and Life Sciences - University of Liverpool. www.liverpool.ac.uk.
  27. Web site: Iain Buchan. scholar.google.com.
  28. García-Fiñana . Marta . Hughes . David M . Cheyne . Christopher P . Burnside . Girvan . Stockbridge . Mark . Fowler . Tom A . Fowler . Veronica L . Wilcox . Mark H . Semple . Malcolm G . Buchan . Iain . Performance of the Innova SARS-CoV-2 antigen rapid lateral flow test in the Liverpool asymptomatic testing pilot: population based cohort study . BMJ . 6 July 2021 . 374 . n1637 . 10.1136/bmj.n1637 . 34230058 . 8259455 .
  29. Mina . Michael J . Peto . Tim E . García-Fiñana . Marta . Semple . Malcolm G . Buchan . Iain E . Clarifying the evidence on SARS-CoV-2 antigen rapid tests in public health responses to COVID-19 . The Lancet . April 2021 . 397 . 10283 . 1425–1427 . 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00425-6 . 33609444 . 8049601 .
  30. Zhang . Xingna . Barr . Ben . Green . Mark . Hughes . David . Ashton . Matthew . Charalampopoulos . Dimitrios . García-Fiñana . Marta . Buchan . Iain . Impact of community asymptomatic rapid antigen testing on covid-19 related hospital admissions: synthetic control study . BMJ . 23 November 2022 . 379 . e071374 . 10.1136/bmj-2022-071374 . 36418047 . 9682337 .
  31. Barr . Ben . Zhang . Xingna . Green . Mark . Buchan . Iain . A blueprint for synthetic control methodology: a causal inference tool for evaluating natural experiments in population health . BMJ . 23 November 2022 . 379 . o2712 . 10.1136/bmj.o2712 . 36418028 . 253802686 . free.
  32. Green . Mark A. . García-Fiñana . Marta . Barr . Ben . Burnside . Girvan . Cheyne . Christopher P. . Hughes . David . Ashton . Matthew . Sheard . Sally . Buchan . Iain E. . Evaluating social and spatial inequalities of large scale rapid lateral flow SARS-CoV-2 antigen testing in COVID-19 management: An observational study of Liverpool, UK (November 2020 to January 2021) . The Lancet Regional Health - Europe . July 2021 . 6 . 100107 . 10.1016/j.lanepe.2021.100107 . 34002172 . 8114854 .
  33. Crozier . Alex . Rajan . Selina . Buchan . Iain . McKee . Martin . Put to the test: use of rapid testing technologies for covid-19 . BMJ . 3 February 2021 . 372 . n208 . 10.1136/bmj.n208 . 33536228 . 231775752 . free.
  34. Marsden . Lucy . Hughes . David M. . Corcoran . Rhiannon . Cheyne . Christopher P. . Ashton . Matt . Buchan . Iain . Coffey . Emer . García-Fiñana . Marta . Daily testing of contacts of SARS-CoV-2 infected cases as an alternative to quarantine for key workers in Liverpool: A prospective cohort study . eClinicalMedicine . August 2022 . 50 . 101519 . 10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101519 . 35795716 . 9249302 .
  35. Tulloch . John S P . Micocci . Massimo . Buckle . Peter . Lawrenson . Karen . Kierkegaard . Patrick . McLister . Anna . Gordon . Adam L . García-Fiñana . Marta . Peddie . Steve . Ashton . Matthew . Buchan . Iain . Parvulescu . Paula . Enhanced lateral flow testing strategies in care homes are associated with poor adherence and were insufficient to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks: results from a mixed methods implementation study . Age and Ageing . 10 November 2021 . 50 . 6 . 1868–1875 . 10.1093/ageing/afab162 . 34272866 . 8406873 .
  36. Knight . Stephen R . Ho . Antonia . Pius . Riinu . Buchan . Iain . Carson . Gail . Drake . Thomas M . Dunning . Jake . Fairfield . Cameron J . Gamble . Carrol . Green . Christopher A . Gupta . Rishi . Halpin . Sophie . Hardwick . Hayley E . Holden . Karl A . Horby . Peter W . Jackson . Clare . Mclean . Kenneth A . Merson . Laura . Nguyen-Van-Tam . Jonathan S . Norman . Lisa . Noursadeghi . Mahdad . Olliaro . Piero L . Pritchard . Mark G . Russell . Clark D . Shaw . Catherine A . Sheikh . Aziz . Solomon . Tom . Sudlow . Cathie . Swann . Olivia V . Turtle . Lance CW . Openshaw . Peter JM . Baillie . J Kenneth . Semple . Malcolm G . Docherty . Annemarie B . Harrison . Ewen M . ISARIC4C . investigators . Risk stratification of patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 using the ISARIC WHO Clinical Characterisation Protocol: development and validation of the 4C Mortality Score . BMJ . 9 September 2020 . 370 . m3339 . 10.1136/bmj.m3339 . 32907855 . 7116472 .
  37. Hughes . David M . Bird . Sheila M . Cheyne . Christopher P . Ashton . Matthew . Campbell . Melisa C . García-Fiñana . Marta . Buchan . Iain . Rapid antigen testing in COVID-19 management for school-aged children: an observational study in Cheshire and Merseyside, UK . Journal of Public Health . 14 March 2023 . 45 . 1 . e38–e47 . 10.1093/pubmed/fdac003 . 35137216 . 8903429 .
  38. Pattni . Karan . Hungerford . Daniel . Adams . Sarah . Buchan . Iain . Cheyne . Christopher P. . García-Fiñana . Marta . Hall . Ian . Hughes . David M. . Overton . Christopher E. . Zhang . Xingna . Sharkey . Kieran J. . Effectiveness of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccines for reducing susceptibility to infection with the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) of SARS-CoV-2 . BMC Infectious Diseases . December 2022 . 22 . 1 . 270 . 10.1186/s12879-022-07239-z . 35307024 . 8934524 . free .
  39. Web site: Blog: How science and society came together for the Events Research Programme - University of Liverpool News. Sean. Neagle. May 7, 2021.
  40. Burnside . Girvan . Cheyne . Christopher P . Leeming . Gary . Humann . Michael . Darby . Alistair . Green . Mark A . Crozier . Alexander . Maskell . Simon . O’Halloran . Kay . Musi . Elena . Carmi . Elinor . Khan . Naila . Fisher . Debra . Corcoran . Rhiannon . Dunning . Jake . Edmunds . W John . Tharmaratnam . Kukatharmini . Hughes . David M . Malki-Epshtein . Liora . Cook . Malcolm . Roberts . Ben M . Gallagher . Eileen . Howell . Kate . Chand . Meera . Kemp . Robin . Boulter . Matthew . Fowler . Tom . Semple . Malcolm G . Coffey . Emer . Ashton . Matt . García-Fiñana . Marta . Buchan . Iain E . Buchan . IE . COVID-19 risk mitigation in reopening mass cultural events: population-based observational study for the UK Events Research Programme in Liverpool City Region . Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine . January 2024 . 117 . 1 . 11–23 . 10.1177/01410768231182389 . 37351911 . free . 10858718 .
  41. van Staa . Tjeerd-Pieter . Goldacre . Ben . Buchan . Iain . Smeeth . Liam . Big health data: the need to earn public trust . BMJ . 14 July 2016 . 354 . i3636 . 10.1136/bmj.i3636 . 27418128 . 7111361 .
  42. Geissbuhler . A. . Safran . C. . Buchan . I. . Bellazzi . R. . Labkoff . S. . Eilenberg . K. . Leese . A. . Richardson . C. . Mantas . J. . Murray . P. . De Moor . G. . Trustworthy reuse of health data: A transnational perspective . International Journal of Medical Informatics . January 2013 . 82 . 1 . 1–9 . 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2012.11.003 . 23182430 .
  43. Web site: Adobe Acrobat. acrobat.adobe.com.
  44. Simpson . Angela . Tan . Vincent Y. F. . Winn . John . Svensén . Markus . Bishop . Christopher M. . Heckerman . David E. . Buchan . Iain . Custovic . Adnan . Beyond Atopy: Multiple Patterns of Sensitization in Relation to Asthma in a Birth Cohort Study . American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine . 1 June 2010 . 181 . 11 . 1200–1206 . 10.1164/rccm.200907-1101OC . 20167852 .
  45. Trajectories of Lung Function during Childhood. Danielle C. M.. Belgrave. Iain. Buchan. Christopher. Bishop. Lesley. Lowe. Angela. Simpson. Adnan. Custovic. May 1, 2014. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. 189. 9. 1101–1109. 10.1164/rccm.201309-1700OC. 24606581. 4098108.
  46. Hickey . G. L. . Grant . S. W. . Murphy . G. J. . Bhabra . M. . Pagano . D. . McAllister . K. . Buchan . I. . Bridgewater . B. . Dynamic trends in cardiac surgery: why the logistic EuroSCORE is no longer suitable for contemporary cardiac surgery and implications for future risk models . European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery . June 2013 . 43 . 6 . 1146–1152 . 10.1093/ejcts/ezs584 . 23152436 . 3655624 .
  47. Mills . Edward J. . Nachega . Jean B. . Buchan . Iain . Orbinski . James . Attaran . Amir . Singh . Sonal . Rachlis . Beth . Wu . Ping . Cooper . Curtis . Thabane . Lehana . Wilson . Kumanan . Guyatt . Gordon H. . Bangsberg . David R. . Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America: A Meta-analysis . JAMA . 9 August 2006 . 296 . 6 . 679–690 . 10.1001/jama.296.6.679 . 16896111 .
  48. Prosperi . Mattia . Guo . Yi . Sperrin . Matt . Koopman . James S. . Min . Jae S. . He . Xing . Rich . Shannan . Wang . Mo . Buchan . Iain E. . Bian . Jiang . Causal inference and counterfactual prediction in machine learning for actionable healthcare . Nature Machine Intelligence . 13 July 2020 . 2 . 7 . 369–375 . 10.1038/s42256-020-0197-y . 225597294 .
  49. Bundred . P. . Kitchiner . D . Buchan . I . Prevalence of overweight and obese children between 1989 and 1998: population based series of cross sectional studies . BMJ . 10 February 2001 . 322 . 7282 . 326–328 . 10.1136/bmj.322.7282.326 . 11159654 . 26573 .
  50. Incident cancer burden attributable to excess body mass index in 30 European countries. Andrew G.. Renehan. Isabelle. Soerjomataram. Margaret. Tyson. Matthias. Egger. Marcel. Zwahlen. Jan Willem. Coebergh. Iain. Buchan. February 1, 2010. International Journal of Cancer. 126. 3. 692–702. 10.1002/ijc.24803. 19645011 . 15789870 . free.
  51. Sperrin . Matthew . Rushton . Helen . Dixon . William G . Normand . Alexis . Villard . Joffrey . Chieh . Angela . Buchan . Iain . Who Self-Weighs and What Do They Gain From It? A Retrospective Comparison Between Smart Scale Users and the General Population in England . Journal of Medical Internet Research . 21 January 2016 . 18 . 1 . e17 . 10.2196/jmir.4767 . 26794900 . 4742620 . free .
  52. Hacking . J. M. . Muller . S. . Buchan . I. E. . Trends in mortality from 1965 to 2008 across the English north-south divide: comparative observational study . BMJ . 15 February 2011 . 342 . feb15 2 . d508 . 10.1136/bmj.d508 . 21325004 . 3039695 .
  53. Buchan . Iain E . Kontopantelis . Evangelos . Sperrin . Matthew . Chandola . Tarani . Doran . Tim . North-South disparities in English mortality1965–2015: longitudinal population study . Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health . September 2017 . 71 . 9 . 928–936 . 10.1136/jech-2017-209195 . 28784630 . 195668107 . free . 5561382 .
  54. Kontopantelis . Evangelos . Buchan . Iain . Webb . Roger T . Ashcroft . Darren M . Mamas . Mamas A . Doran . Tim . Disparities in mortality among 25–44-year-olds in England: a longitudinal, population-based study . The Lancet Public Health . December 2018 . 3 . 12 . e567–e575 . 10.1016/S2468-2667(18)30177-4 . 30389570 . 6277813 .
  55. Web site: Time to address the north south health divide. The University of Manchester.
  56. Web site: CIPHA - CIPHA and Care Alliance win Best Use of Data at HTN Awards. www.cipha.nhs.uk.

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