Institute of Health Research/Health Statistics seminar

In 2011 the Department of Health set out a specification for a hospital mortality index, to act as an alternative to the Dr Foster HSMR, which is a commercial development. In particular they wanted to consider deaths within 30 days of discharge from hospital as well as within hospital deaths. A tender for the statistical development of what is now known as the Summary Hospital Mortality Index (SHMI) was won by ScHARR in Sheffield. The speaker will describe the challenges of dealing with 96M records, and producing the Index. He will review the statistical methods used to produce the Index and describe some of the results. Finally he will review the uses and abuses of any summary mortality index.

Mike Campbell is a Professor of Medical Statistics at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, where he is also Director of Postgraduate Research. He was a member of the NICE Appraisal Committee between 2000 and 2010, and is currently a member of the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research Commissioning Board and Chair of the Medical Section of the Royal Statistical Society.

His main research interests are: statistics in primary care; the design of complex interventions including cluster randomised trials; sample size estimation; analysis of health related quality of life data; time series analysis applied to air pollution and health data; health technology assessment; and hospital mortality. Earlier this year (with co-author Stephen Walters) he published the book How to Design, Analyse and Report Cluster Randomised Trials in Medicine and Health Related Research.

Please contact Cath Hopkins if you wish to attend:

cath.hopkins@exeter.ac.uk or 01392 726055