Dr Rod Middleton, Associate Professor Disease Registers, Population Data Science, shares with us his inspirational journey into research.
What did you do before joining UK MS Register?
I started as an ITU Nurse, then left nursing to study Computer Science at Swansea University. My next career was as Critical Care and Theatres System Manager; I undertook my MBA whilst doing this.
What sparked your interest in a career in research?
Research has always been part of my life – whilst nursing, I recognised its importance in almost every patient interaction and saw impactful research could be reviewed and taken into practice quickly. When I moved to System Management, data which I collected formed part of several research submissions. Seeing the shift from ‘individual patients’ to the larger impact it could have on a population was eye-opening.
If any, what challenges have you faced in your journey into research?
Moving from practicing other’s research, to carrying out analysis on data, and then ultimately to writing your own research can be daunting – imposter syndrome is real! But the feeling of your first article making it through peer review makes it all worth it!
What type of research have you worked on?
I am PI of the UK Multiple Sclerosis Register, capturing ‘real world’ data from people with MS, and from the NHS, to carry out data linkage between these and another sources of data such MRI scans and tissue data. We work in both qualitative and quantitative data, image analysis, machine learning and apply both cross sectional and longitudinal study designs to these.
What areas of research interest you? What does the future hold?
Epidemiology of the disease, response to disease modifying therapies, cognition, patient reported outcomes, and impact of smoking on disability. We have so much impactful data it’s hard to narrow it down. For the future we are very interested in more research involving federated queries across European MS Registers.
What advice would you give to someone looking at a career in research?
Be passionate! And choose a subject matter that you care about – for me I think I’m still trying to help patients get better at the end of the day, I can hopefully help more than one at a time now. If you can take that passion, apply some rigour and learn the methods needed to research what you care about then you have a fantastic opportunity to make a difference.
UK Multiple Sclerosis (UK MS) Register is one of the 12 Centres of Excellence based in Population Data Science at Swansea University. Find out more about their work on their website.
