Centre for Mathematics Medicine and Biology Seminar

Andrew Prayle, University of Nottingham

Title: Measuring lung health trajectories in childhood – how can models help?

Abstract:

Lung health in adult life is the single best predictor of your personal mortality rate. Adult lung health is a function of lung growth in childhood, which is impacted by environmental toxins, disease and nutrition. There are limited methodologies to assess lung function in the pre-school period, and all of these have drawbacks. Models could provide insight into the lung health of pre-school children, by drawing upon results of several 'imperfect' diagnostic tests in order to parameterise an individual patient's lung model, and track their lung health over time. Andrew has no solutions to this problem, but will outline a framework of what tests could be used to estimate model parameters, and how such a model could be applied in clinical practice.