Meet the Researcher: Professor Alan Radford
Hannah Williams is a Year 10 Work experience
student spending a week learning about the research and communication activity
of IGH. Here, she interviews IGH’s Professor Alan Radford to find out about his
work and why it’s important.
Alan Radford is Professor of Veterinary Health Informatics at the
University Of Liverpool. His job entails teaching vet students about viruses of
relevance to animals and public health, and researching the use of big data to
improve the health of animals and their owners.
As part of his work he leads SAVSNET (Small Animal Veterinary
Surveillance Network), a project which uses electronic health data and which
monitors the many diseases or infecting organisms tested for at veterinary
diagnostic laboratories across the UK. The latter data can be analysed alongside
real-time data recorded at the end of consultations from participating
veterinary surgeons to monitor, for example, what antibiotics are being
prescribed and whether antibiotic resistance is present in bacteria causing
infections in animals. Moreover, SAVSNET helps to make information accessible
for all, which will increase awareness and knowledge of diseases in the small
animal population in the UK.
So how does research on big data helps us understand health in animals?
Animals are a big part of our lives, recent statistics show 49% of adults in
the UK own a pet. We also eat animals, as well as keeping them as companions,
therefore their welfare is very important to us.
How does this benefit society? Not only do we want our animals to be
happy and healthy but the health of animals can impact our health too. For
example, if your dog has an illness there is a chance it may be passed onto
you. To ensure this doesn’t happen, big data is a new way to better understand
diseases that could be passed to humans and reduce these diseases.
What impact will this research have? The data collected shows all types
of ill health in animals, therefore by looking at disease, SAVSNET can identify
new ways to reduce the risk of diseases. An example of their work is chocolate
poisoning in dogs. We all know that chocolate is poisonous to dogs, however do
you know what time of the year chocolate poisoning most often occurs? Through
using big data, they found Christmas was in fact the most common time of the
year for chocolate poisoning in dogs to occur. Using this information, owners
can be reminded to be careful where they leave chocolate lying around at
Christmas and it enables vets to be aware they may have more cases of chocolate
poisoning in dogs during the Christmas period.
What changes do you hope to see? SAVSNET will help to understand
individual diseases, how common they are in vet practice, which animals are
most likely to be affected, what are the best treatments and best ways to avoid
disease in the small animal population of the UK.
Currently, Professor Alan Radford is working on a variety of diseases,
as well as antibiotic use, tumours, rabbit dental disease and fleas
infestations. When asked what made him want to become a researcher he said he
never planned to; he wanted to be a vet, however after he got his veterinary
degree, he discovered he wanted to create new knowledge and understand animals
at a population level where he could have broad impact on improving animal
health.
Finally, some of his favourite things about his job include working with
people, being stretched to think of new ways of doing things, with every day
different and that he is starting to see the research he is doing have an
impact.