Samantha Crossfield

Profile

Samantha is a Research Fellow using routinely collected health data to deliver insight into disease management. She is studying for a PhD (MRC Leeds Medical Bioinformatics Centre) in the use of electronic health records research to develop an understanding of routine musculoskeletal care. She investigates indicators of management and patterns in treatment and outcomes for common inflammatory musculoskeletal diseases. The project assesses change in management over time. The method is to apply epidemiologic techniques to GP and hospital data.  Outcomes are assessed using statistical and clinical review.

She is also part of the University of Leeds Data Services Team that provides data handling support to the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics. She leads the information governance and data handling processes for a Macmillan-funded project that links GP, community and hospital data to assess long-term cancer care. She also works on de-identification processes for electronic health data, linkage and spatio-temporal data and an Information Security Management System for the institute.

Previously, Samantha received a BSc in Natural Sciences and an MSc in Evolutionary Anthropology from Durham University, where she was awarded the Class of 2009 Scholarship.  She then joined the University of Leeds and The Phoenix Partnership (TPP), a clinical systems company, as a Knowledge Transfer Associate, funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board.  In this role she set up the research enterprise, ResearchOne, and was awarded the Research Councils UK (RCUK) award for Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the most academic impact, 2014. She continued by developing TPP’s SystmInsight that runs an international programme of research, public health and education. SystmInsight delivers projects that enhance clinical understanding and research regarding health and healthcare systems, and include the first daily national symptom surveillance system (developed with Public Health England).

Responsibilities

• Journal Club Lead
• UG Tutor

Research interests

Samantha’s interests lie in the analysis and visualisation of routine electronic health data, developing processes to optimise information governance in data analytics, and embedding research outcomes in the clinical domain. Over the next few years she aims to assess treatment patterns for common inflammatory musculoskeletal diseases in electronic health records data. This will support further research to embed such outcomes in clinical systems. She will continue to develop an understanding of health data and skills in data handling using R, SQL, Tableau, Weka and other appropriate and upcoming tools.

Research groups and institutes

• Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine
• Non-Inflammatory Musculoskeletal