MLTC-M Community of Practice in Statistical Methods for Multimorbidity Research

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According to the NHS, two out of three of individuals aged over 65 have more than one long term health condition. Having two or more conditions, also known as multimorbidities, can cause complications as both conditions have to be taken into account when treating an individual. For example, we may want to give a patient a drug to treat one of their conditions but this treatment could potentially make their other conditions worse. Alternatively if someone is on two different drugs we don't always know how those drugs interact and whether having both drugs could cause adverse side effects. Medical research generally focuses on one condition at a time and therefore results from medical studies may not be applicable in practice where patients may have many other conditions. To tackle this problem a number of studies have recently been set up to investigate multimorbidities. These include exploring which conditions tend to occur together, investigating multimorbidities that lead to hospitalisation or identifying biological processes that cause similar diseases to occur throughout the body.There are a number of shared analytical methods that will be used in these studies and each study group contains specialists in cutting edge statistical techniques. We aim to set up a "Community of Practice" that will facilitate collaborations between these projects to ensure that the highest quality scientific methods are used for studying multimorbidities. This will allow expertise to be shared across the studies and to the wider scientific community. This community will hold regular meetings to share developments in the field, as well as providing a platform for early career researchers to present their work in a supportive and constructive environment. Workshops will allow small teams of experts to develop protocols for best practice that can be directly implemented in each of the studies. These results will also be shared amongst the wider scientific community through online repositories and video tutorials. There will be dedicated support for early career researchers to develop skills in applying these methods and for general career development. This community of practice will allow research into multimorbidities to be performed efficiently and to the highest standard to ensure the highest possible impact on patient outcomes.