Informing Chronic Kidney Disease health policy in Ireland: Linkage of large datasets to study the interaction between ageing and kidney

The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) is a remarkable study undertaken in Ireland, which invited over 8,500 people aged 50 and over to participate at wave 1 between 2009 and 2011. Individuals who agreed to take part were subsequently invited to present for a comprehensive health assessment. This study is invaluable to the Irish population by being able to report the health of the nation in a wide variety of areas and can identify how common certain conditions are in Ireland. TILDA is particularly unique in that it has performed a number of assessments that other community-based studies in the world have not been able to measure. One such measure is called the Finometer and is capable of estimating how the heart is working. Our first objective is to look at whether kidney function and heart function are linked in healthy people aged over 50 years who took part in the TILDA study. TILDA has now completed 4 waves and is at a stage where the data collected is large enough that traditional techniques for data analysis may be suboptimal in gleaning the maximal potential from the data. We are proposing to apply innovative data analysis techniques in order to use all the information gained from the TILDA study in order to figure out what features predict things such as the need for hospitalisation and nursing home admission and even death over follow up. We are also interested in how important kidney disease is in the prediction of these events. Large amounts of data are being collected passively through innovative technology. This is the case with use of our bank cards, bus passes and even in our engagement with healthcare such as GP and Hospital visits. Big data refers to the analysis of large amounts of data.

Award Date
27 September 2018
Award Value
€134,438.00
Principal Investigator
Professor Donal Sexton
Host Institution
Trinity College Dublin
Scheme
Applying Research into Policy & Practice Postdoctoral Fellowships