Ian is Head of Care Sciences at the University of South Wales, where his portfolio spans nursing, midwifery, several allied health professions and public health. A Podiatrist with over 25 years’ experience spanning practice, education and research, his PhD focused on clinical biomechanics. He has supervised multiple PhD candidates investigating issues that include the impact of chronic kidney disease  on lower limb risk status.

A scientific and clinical approach to the mining of real world datasets to gain insight to lower limb risk profile in people with diabetes

Podiatrists play an important role in the prevention, surveillance, and management of lower extremity complications in diabetes. The increasing prevalence of diabetes, and the time span over which regular Podiatry clinic visits occur, has resulted in the development of extensive associated clinical datasets. These contain information on multiple clinical variables and risk factors that potentially offer insight to disease progression, with the volume of data permitting the use of powerful statistical techniques such as logistic regression prediction modelling. We describe our approach to mining our large dataset that aims to risk-profile patients to inform service planning and design. Initially this is focused on establishing the validity and reliability of a broad set of clinical variables, which is also informing guidance on the measurement and recording of clinical data to permit future data analysis.