The number of people living with chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) has increased substantially in recent years, and they experience a wide range of impacts on their health, both in relation to CVD and other health conditions. Providers of healthcare face increasing demands from increasingly complex patients who are living in poor health with multiple health conditions for longer. Understanding the cardiovascular and wider health impacts to individuals and healthcare systems respectively and identifying patient groups with the highest unmet need can inform data-driven decisions on providing treatments and allocating health resources in the population. This is particularly important for cardiovascular health, as cardiovascular health profiles are highly complex: individuals have very different underlying combinations of diseases and experience significantly different health trajectories over time. This complexity is best captured through the analysis of large-scale health databases that contain a rich variety of information, such as the UK Biobank.
The UK Biobank and a UK-based electronic health records database will be used to develop robust epidemiological analyses and statistical models, which identify patient characteristics that best predict later life CVD and general health (e.g. onset of heart attacks, strokes and death) and health care resource use. The effects of medical treatments on limiting poor health outcomes and reducing health care resource use in different groups of people will also be analysed. This research will be completed within one year. The results of this study will allow us to identify patient groups who will benefit the most clinically, so that targeting treatment to these groups result in the largest reduction in healthcare burden and more equitable health outcomes for the population.