Contact

• workRoom A60 BDI 1
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• Esmond.Urwin@nottingham.ac.uk
• https://nottinghambrc.nihr.ac.uk/research/informatics/health-informatics-team

Biography

Esmond studied his undergraduate degree (Manufacturing Engineering (BEng. (Hons)) whilst at the University of Hertfordshire and then spent time as a production manager and trouble shooter (à la Sir John Harvey Jones) for a multinational food company working across the UK and Europe. However, a change in direction was desired and he furthered his studies undertaking postgraduate degrees at the University of Nottingham (Manufacturing Engineering & Management (MSc.), Knowledge Engineering (PhD)). After a post-doctoral position at Nottingham, he moved to Loughborough University where his academic career focused upon knowledge management, informatics, interoperability and ontology design predominantly for the defence and aerospace industries. This focus has drawn him to standardisation activities for which co-wrote the international standard ISO 20534 for Industrial automation systems and integration. Moving back to the University of Nottingham in 2020, Esmond was part of the large CO-CONNECT project during the COVID-19 pandemic. His work focussed upon the application and implementation of OHDSI's OMOP common data model to structure, represent and standardise disparate national COVID-19 health datasets for discoverability. Additionally, he developed a national COVID-19 serology laboratory minimum data standard in conjunction with the National Pathology Exchange (Napes) and the NHS for better reporting of granular levels of COVID-19 serology data nationally. To further support healthcare terminology standardisation and data representation, he developed in conjunction with the University of Dundee the CO-CONNECT controlled healthcare vocabulary which contains concepts that represent serology, medical conditions, medical observations, ethnicity, laboratory systems and specimens. Further work with BBMRI-ERIC across Europe focused upon the development of the update to the Minimum Information About BIobank data Sharing (MIABIS), from version 2 to version 3. The CO-CONNECT vocabulary specimen concepts directly support MIABIS. Esmond's current position for the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Nottingham focuses upon healthcare data standardisation, the further development and better use of OMOP and vocabulary creation for FAIR data purposes. He currently collaborates with Health Data Research UK, ELIXIR, OHDSI, UK BioBank, National Research Data Infrastructure for Personal Health, UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration and Data and Our Future Health.