Peter Bath | The University of Sheffield (original) (raw)

Papers by Peter Bath

Crocidolite-blue asbestos Amosite-brown asbestos Chrysotile-white asbestos History of asbestos Ø ... more Crocidolite-blue asbestos Amosite-brown asbestos Chrysotile-white asbestos History of asbestos Ø Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) noted that slaves working in the asbestos mines died at an early age Ø Charlemagne's tablecloth-'party piece' Ø The 'magic mineral'-indestructible insulator Ø First record of probable mesothelioma 1870s Ø Asbestos associated with mesothelioma 1935 (Gloyne, UK) then 1960 (Wagner, SA) Ø UK legal ban on blue and brown asbestos

ObjectiveTo assess accuracy of telephone triage in identifying patients who need emergency care a... more ObjectiveTo assess accuracy of telephone triage in identifying patients who need emergency care amongst those with suspected COVID-19 infection and identify factors which affect triage accuracy.DesignObservational cohort studySettingCommunity telephone triage in the Yorkshire and Humber, Bassetlaw, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire region.Participants40, 261 adults who contacted NHS 111 telephone triage services provided by Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust between the 18th March 2020 and 29th June 2020 with symptoms indicating possible COVID-19 infection were linked to Office for National Statistics death registration data, hospital and general practice electronic health care data collected by NHS Digital.OutcomeAccuracy of triage disposition (self-care/non-urgent clinical assessment versus ambulance dispatch/urgent clinical assessment) was assessed in terms of death or need for organ support at 30, 7 and 3 days from first contact with the telephone triage service....

Inf. Res., 2014

Introduction. The aim of this paper is to identify and characterize the routes by which research ... more Introduction. The aim of this paper is to identify and characterize the routes by which research may reach health service managers to influence their critical decisions. Method.This research used two series of qualitative interviews, documentary analysis (a calendar study) and a card-sorting exercise to explore the workplace information practices of thirty-six health service managers. Analysis. Both interview studies used the cross-case analysis. The second interview study also used within-case analysis in the form of information transaction mapping. Information transactions, calendar study and card-sorting exercise data were reported quantitatively. Results. This exploratory study found that these health service managers overcame short time lines, unclear processes and simultaneous conflicting priorities by bringing together groups accustomed to sharing information orally to inform their critical decisions. Each decision was informed by different categories and types of information...

eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fullte... more eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website.

A protocol for a scoping review of equity in the health needs and service coverage of older people

Falls occur frequently among older people and represent the most common cause of injury related m... more Falls occur frequently among older people and represent the most common cause of injury related morbidity and mortality in later life. Preventing falls is an important way to reduce injuries, hospitalizations and injury-related morbidity and mortality among older people. The research literature has identified hundreds of risk factors for falls among elderly people. Prioritizing risk factors for falls is useful for designing effective and efficacious prevention programs. The aim of this study was to use the Analytic Hierarchy Process to develop a hierarchy of risk factors for falls based on the knowledge and experience of experts working in this field. We designed a web portal to submit electronic questionnaires in order to reach the highest number of respondents quickly and to reduce errors in responding. We contacted the person responsible for the Falls sections of four scientific societies. Finally, we propose a correction method to modify respondents’ relative importance on the b...

Previous research has identified various risk factors for mortality in older people. The aim of t... more Previous research has identified various risk factors for mortality in older people. The aim of this paper was to use Classification and Regression Tree to predict 15-year survival in community-dwelling older people. Data were obtained from a United Kingdom representative sample of 1042 community-dwelling people aged 65 and over. Outcome was time from 1985 interview to death or censorship on February 29, 2000. Classification and Regression Tree is a non-parametric technique widely used in medical domain classification. We applied CART to the set of risk-factors identified in a previous research. The selected CART model is based on age, dose of drug prescribed and handgrip measures. It predicts survival with a sensitivity rate of 76.3% and a specificity rate of 66.3%. The selection of variables are consistent with previous research. Finally, we observed the range of risk factors and their combination associated with increased and decreased mortality.

Understanding the financial burden of chronic diseases in developing regions still remains an imp... more Understanding the financial burden of chronic diseases in developing regions still remains an important economical factor which influences the successful implementation of sensor based applications for continuous monitoring of chronic conditions. Our research focused on a comparison of literature-based data with real costs of the management and treatment of chronic diseases in a developing country, and we are using Kosovo as an example here. The results reveal that the actual living costs exceed the minimum expenses that chronic diseases impose. Following the potential of a positive economic impact of sensor based platforms for monitoring chronic conditions, we further examined the users perception of digital technology. The purpose of this paper is to present the varying cost levels of treating chronic diseases, identify the users concerns and requirements towards digital technology and discuss issues and challenges that the application of sensor based platforms imply in low and mi...

Study Objective Tools proposed to triage patient acuity in COVID-19 infection have only been vali... more Study Objective Tools proposed to triage patient acuity in COVID-19 infection have only been validated in hospital populations. We estimated the accuracy of five risk-stratification tools recommended to predict severe illness and compare accuracy to existing clinical decision-making in a pre-hospital setting. Methods An observational cohort study using linked ambulance service data for patients attended by EMS crews in the Yorkshire and Humber region of England between 18th March 2020 and 29th June 2020 was conducted to assess performance of the PRIEST tool, NEWS2, the WHO algorithm, CRB-65 and PMEWS in patients with suspected COVID-19 infection. The primary outcome was death or need for organ support. Results Of 7549 patients in our cohort, 17.6% (95% CI:16.8% to 18.5%) experienced the primary outcome. The NEWS2, PMEWS, PRIEST tool and WHO algorithm identified patients at risk of adverse outcomes with a high sensitivity (>0.95) and specificity ranging from 0.3 (NEWS2) to 0.41 (P...

In order to obtain data via Twitter, researchers may use a variety of software or they may ask fo... more In order to obtain data via Twitter, researchers may use a variety of software or they may ask for a custom tool to be created by software developers. However, different software may use different Application Programming Interfaces that may provide varying levels of Twitter data. In this study we compare data on Tweets about the Ebola virus obtained via the Firehose, and Search APIs respectively over a 3-day period in January 2015. We found that searchers with the keyword ‘Ebola’ were gathering up to 79% of all tweets using Mozdeh, and 74% of all tweets via Chorus which both use the Search API. The complete set of tweets was 195,713 Tweets (100%) obtained via Texifter and subsequently stored in DiscoverText.

The Meaning Management Challenge: Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease

Existing research into the information activities of people living with HIV has typically focused... more Existing research into the information activities of people living with HIV has typically focused on issues of where individuals look and how they search. Little attention has been directed to understanding the meaning health information carries for those who use it or how information practices are contextualised within the social experience of living with a chronic condition. This paper explores how biomedical and experiential health information co-mediate the lives of gay men living with HIV. The discussion is based on a qualitative study of the information experiences of 24 HIV+ gay men living in the north of England. Ethnographic data were collected using unstructured interviews, health questionnaires, home mapping and photography. The findings indicate that the men's information practices parallel the distinction drawn between disease-as-pathology and illness-associal-experience. Participants typically passed through a limited period (not always immediately upon diagnosis) in which they became 'sponges' for biomedical knowledge about the virus and its treatment. The information collected was regarded as essential to understanding and managing the physical effects of HIV, with specialist doctors playing a central role in the learning process. Over the longer term, however, disease information proved secondary to illness or experiential information collected either directly from a man's own history or from that of others like him. This second type of health information helped men inform their everyday lives while dealing with the uncertainty of their long term prognosis. Charitable HIV support agencies, in particular, served as a key information ground in which experiential knowledge was exchanged, a process that then facilitated the emergence of men regarding themselves as valuable sources (i.e. creators and disseminators) of essential health information rather than simply consumers.

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society

This paper presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of n=13,373 tweets that relate to the peak o... more This paper presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of n=13,373 tweets that relate to the peak of the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009, and the Ebola outbreak of 2014. Tweets were analysed using thematic analysis and a number of themes and sub-themes were identified. The results were brought together in an abstraction phase and the commonalities between the cases were studied. An interesting similarity which emerged was the rate at which Twitter users expressed intense fear and panic akin to that of the sociological concept of "moral panic". Moreover, a number of discussions were found to emerge which were not reported in previous literature. Our study is the largest in-depth analysis of tweets on infectious diseases. Our results will inform public health strategies for future infectious disease outbreaks. Future work will seek to conduct further comparisons and explore relevant health theory. CCS CONCEPTS • Information systems → World Wide Web→ Web applications→ Social networks

The definition of well-being is complex and well-being may be affected by a wide variety of facto... more The definition of well-being is complex and well-being may be affected by a wide variety of factors. Among older people well-being is even more complex, because it may vary depending on different individuals' backgrounds and experiences. Nonetheless, it is important to understand what the concept of well-being means to older people and which factors affect well-being, because of the growing importance of cost-utility studies in medicine and health services research. Such studies aim to measure the quality of life in participants before and after a medical/surgical intervention. However, the scales used to measure quality of life are based on expert opinion, and could be improved by being more focused on what the concept of well-being means to older people themselves. In this study, based on scientific literature, we defined a hierarchy of 45 factors, organized into 15 subcategories, which were grouped into 5 main categories. A questionnaire was submitted to 23 older people who participated in a focus group on well-being. Based on their responses, we used the Analytic

Activities, Adaptation & Aging

The NLSAA survey was conducted in 1985 with 1,042 participants. As of 31st May 2006 (21 years fro... more The NLSAA survey was conducted in 1985 with 1,042 participants. As of 31st May 2006 (21 years from baseline), there were 919 recorded deaths (368 men and 551 women). Mortality analyses were from baseline interview to death or censorship (May 2006). Men and women were analysed separately in unadjusted models and adjusting for demographic and health-related variables. In separate unadjusted models, participation in outdoor activities, indoor productive activities, leisure activities, walking, undertaking activities requiring flexibility and physical effort each were associated with reduced long-term mortality among both men and women. In adjusted models, participation in physical activities had no significant association with mortality risk for men. Among women, participation in outdoor activities and leisure activities remained significantly associated with longterm survival in adjusted models. Among men, the benefits of physical activities for mortality risk were explained through demographic, health and psychosocial variables. However, participation in outdoor and leisure physical activities was beneficial for women and had a significant association with survival, even when controlling for demographic, health and psychosocial variables. Therefore, encouraging participation in specific physical activities, such as gardening, swimming and dancing among older women may improve long-term survival.

Breast Cancer Management

Forum users may form strong bonds with other people on the forum and can gain great benefit from ... more Forum users may form strong bonds with other people on the forum and can gain great benefit from belonging and being part of a BC community "

Information Sciences

Abstract In this paper, we attempt to utilize the information that is inherent in electronic heal... more Abstract In this paper, we attempt to utilize the information that is inherent in electronic health records (EHR) to predict clinical risks of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients. Because EHR data are typically highly-dimensional and non-linear, we propose a novel relational regularization-based feature selection method to identify informative risk factors from EHR data, on which a sparse ACS risk prediction model can be built. Specifically, we formulate our objective function by imposing two types of correlational characteristics, i.e., feature-feature relations and sample-sample relations, along with an l2-norm regularization term, to extract significant risk factors from EHR data. With the dimension-reduced EHR data, we train a Softmax Regression model to predict clinical risks of ACS patients. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a case study was conducted on a real ACS clinical data-set that was collected from a Chinese hospital. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method for improving the performance of ACS risk prediction via relational regularized risk factor selection by a comparison with state-of-the-art methods.

Journal of medical Internet research, Jan 14, 2018

The availability of an increasing number of online health forums has altered the experience of li... more The availability of an increasing number of online health forums has altered the experience of living with a health condition, as more people are now able to connect and support one another. Empathy is an important component of peer-to-peer support, although little is known about how empathy develops and operates within online health forums. The aim of this paper is to explore how empathy develops and operates within two online health forums for differing health conditions: breast cancer and motor neuron disease (MND), also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This qualitative study analyzed data from two sources: interviews with forum users and downloaded forum posts. Data were collected from two online health forums provided by UK charities: Breast Cancer Care and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. We analyzed 84 threads from the breast cancer forum and 52 from the MND forum. Threads were purposively sampled to reflect varied experiences (eg, illness stages, topics of conve...

Hospital practice (1995), Jan 12, 2018

Cancer of unknown primary is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the United Kingdom. ... more Cancer of unknown primary is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in the United Kingdom. National guidance in 2010 recommended the establishment of a dedicated unknown primary team to facilitate targeted investigation and symptom control. A service development project was undertaken to identify those affected by malignancy of unknown origin and institute a pathway for coordinating their care led by a palliative physician. In order to describe the patient population and illness trajectory and to assess the effect of the new pathway on the clinical outcomes we used a retrospective and prospective comparative case notes survey to identify the pre- and post-pathway population. This took place in secondary care. Inclusion criteria were patients with metastatic disease with no known primary; exclusion criteria were where the site of metastasis was so suggestive of a primary that it would be managed as per that disease process. 88 patients were included. Mean age was 72.5 years. Th...