I am an epidemiologist specialising in electronic health records (EHR) research, with a particular interest in maternal health. I hold a BA Hons in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University and an MSc in Epidemiology from LSHTM. My PhD, awarded in 2014, investigated the role of acute infections and inflammation in vascular disease. I have extensive experience working with large-scale, linked healthcare datasets, including UK primary and secondary care records (CPRD and HES) and US administrative claims data (Medicaid and Medicare). My research spans a range of topics, including inflammation and vascular events, pregnancy, and maternal thyroid disease, supported by a UKRI Innovation Fellowship. I am currently Co-Lead of the Electronic Health Records Research Discipline of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Vaccines and Immunisation at LSHTM. In partnership with the UK Health Security Agency, our work leverages electronic health record data to enhance vaccine coverage and inform evidence-based policy in the UK.
Affiliations
Teaching
I have been teaching on face-to-face and distance learning MSc modules since 2009, including STEPH, Statistical Methods in Epidemiology, Basic Epidemiology, and the Introductory Course in Epidemiology and Medical Statistics (ICEMS) short course. I have been a Module Organiser for Basic Epidemiology (2009-2013) and for the DL MSc Epidemiology Project module EPM500 (2017-2020). I currently teach on two DL modules: Statistical Methods in Epidemiology (EPM202) and Practical Epidemiology (EPM103).
Research
My main research focus is on maternal health and methods to optimise the identification of pregnancies in electronic health record databases. In 2016, I co-led a collaboration between LSHTM and the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) to develop and validate an algorithm to identify and date pregnancies and their outcomes in primary care data. This work established the CPRD Pregnancy Register, a novel research tool that has since supported over thirty published studies. I am particularly interested in optimising the use of the Pregnancy Register alongside emerging data linkages (such as the Maternity Services Dataset, MSDS) to study the uptake and safety of vaccines recommended during pregnancy.
Selected Publications
