Professor Adele Marshall’s analytical skills are in growing demand in areas where they can make a difference to how we live our lives – in education, road safety, finance, security, government and particularly in health.
Professor Marshall is Director of Research at the Queen’s Centre for Statistical Science and Operational Research (CenSSOR) in the School of Mathematics and Physics. She says, ‘There’s a great interest in statistics and analytics. Industry is tapping in with everyone collecting data now, and there’s a demand for graduates in statistics. Take the banks, for example – they realise that some clever modelling, using sophisticated analysis, can make a lot of difference in the economic crisis.’
Professor Marshall has a particular interest in health. Since 2008 she has been a key member of the Centre of Excellence for Public Health Northern Ireland, a partnership between Queen’s and the Institute of Public Health. Its team of investigators has concentrated on major issues such as obesity, diet and smoking, with a focus on nutrition and physical activity, and her research continues to play an important part.
Professor Marshall is also playing a crucial role in the analysis of health care provision. In particular she has developed a statistical model looking at how long elderly patients are liable to stay in hospital.
‘The proportion of the elderly in the population is increasing. Governments right across Europe are finding it more difficult to balance resources and to fund health care. But if you’re able to predict, when patients come into hospital, how long they’re going to stay, how much it’s going to cost, the amount of resources they need – all of this based on factors such as the size of the population and the information you have about the patient on admission – then that can help determine financial"Everyone’s collecting data now and there’s a demand for graduates in statistics." patterns. It’s got to the stage where we can actually create a check list and chart of all the key variables.’
Adele’s initial research in this area was with St George’s Hospital in London, but she also collaborates with health and social care services in Northern Ireland, and she’s now helping health care providers in Milan and the Lombardy region of Italy. ‘That came about through some EPSRC funding that allowed us to employ a postdoctoral research assistant who happened to be Italian. Now we’re trying to broaden that out into a bigger European project.’
Adele’s group has gained international renown for their groundbreaking work. ‘Right across the world we’re recognised for health care modelling. It has now expanded into a family of models which I call Discrete Conditional Phase-type Models. I recently collaborated with Cardiff University to model a neonatal unit in Cardiff. We predicted resource need, how long mothers would be in labour, based on information about them during their pregnancy.’
She is a key member of the Cumberland Initiative, a group of academics who are keen to push forward modelling to help in health care. ‘We believe we can save £20bn if this is adopted properly.’
But wider application is growing. ‘Financial markets, for example – predicting trader collusion. We also have some people working on road traffic flow modelling, the occurrence of accidents, where the hot spots are, identifying those and the road network around them.’
‘One of our PhD students is funded by the Strategic Investment Board, which provides support to the Northern Ireland Executive. He is currently working with DEL and the FE Colleges to analyse demand patterns across the FE sector in ways that will help in the continual drive to improve services and productivity. We’re providing careful modelling to inform strategic planning and decisions about future investment in the college estate that underpins a high quality learning environment for students across the region. And once that’s done for the FE colleges, it can be done for any service.’
Adele hates to see statistics being misused. ‘That often happens. But there is now the UK Statistics Authority who have quite a bit of influence with Government and will point out when something is wrong – like statistics on knife crime, which were misreported.’
She is also a member of council of the Royal Statistical Society, a member of the Statistics Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland Statistics Research Agency and President of the Irish Statistical Association. ‘We keep an eye on things. Accuracy is crucial.’
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