News

We are pleased to congratulate Dr Attracta Brennan in our School on a new funding award as a co-PI with collaborators including Maire Connolly, Mary Dempsey, Lan Yang, Tingyan Wang (Oxford), Bryan Whelan (Manorhamilton hospital), Miriam O’Sullivan (Sligo hospital) and Carmel Silke (Manorhamilton hospital). Attracta’s contribution is in data analysis, scoring tool development, and dissemination.   

Project title: Big Data Driven, Patient-Centric, Outcomes Scoring Tool Linking Multimorbidity, Fracture, Hosptialisation and Death for Patients with Osteoporosis 

This project aims to develop a personalised patient-centered/informed outcomes scoring tool for the Irish population underpinned by multimorbidity indices and big-data analytics for predicting risk of fracture, hospitalisation, and death in osteoporosis patients with multimorbidity. 

Multimorbidity (i.e. the co-occurrence of two or more chronic diseases within an individual) is common in people with osteoporosis, particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, Covid-19, and dementia. These diseases share similar risk factors5. Multimorbidity profoundly negatively impacts risk, treatment, quality of life, and patient outcomes, and associated with higher all-cause mortality6. Studies exploring multimorbidity at a population-level demonstrate its importance, but the risk of fracture and adverse outcomes for individual patients with osteoporosis has not well addressed, or included in tools which include BMD. A patient-centred prediction approach, rather than ‘one size fits all’ approach for outcomes prediction in osteoporosis patients with multimorbidity, is particularly attractive for personalised health care and clinical management. 

Fund: HRB SDAP 2023 - 250k - 2 year project