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

根据NHS的数据，65岁以上的人中有三分之二的人有一种以上的长期健康状况。有两种或两种以上的情况，也称为多发性疾病，可能会导致并发症，因为在治疗一个人时，这两种情况都必须考虑在内。例如，我们可能想给患者一种药物来治疗他们的一种情况，但这种治疗可能会使他们的其他情况变得更糟。或者，如果一个人在服用两种不同的药物，我们并不总是知道这两种药物是如何相互作用的，以及同时服用这两种药物是否会产生不良副作用。医学研究通常一次只关注一种情况，因此在患者可能患有许多其他情况的情况下，医学研究的结果可能不适用于实践。为了解决这个问题，最近已经建立了一些研究来调查多发性疾病。这些研究包括探索哪些疾病往往同时发生，调查导致住院的多病，或确定导致全身发生类似疾病的生物过程。这些研究将使用许多共同的分析方法，每个研究小组都有尖端统计技术方面的专家。我们的目标是建立一个“实践共同体”，促进这些项目之间的合作，以确保使用最高质量的科学方法来研究多发性疾病。这将允许在所有研究中分享专业知识，并向更广泛的科学界分享。这个社区将定期举行会议，分享该领域的发展，并为早期职业研究人员提供一个平台，在一个支持性和建设性的环境中展示他们的工作。讲习班将使小型专家小组能够制定最佳做法的议定书，并可在每项研究中直接实施。这些成果还将通过在线资源库和视频教程在更广泛的科学界之间分享。将专门支持早期职业研究人员发展应用这些方法的技能和一般职业发展。这一实践社区将使对多病的研究能够有效地进行，并达到最高的标准，以确保对患者预后产生尽可能高的影响。

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.