UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Network Structures and Dynamics Of Early Dementia Events Recorded in Primary Care Electronic Health Records

Mackintosh, M; Gonzalez-Izquierdo, A; Rossor, M; Whitaker, K; Direk, K; Denaxas, S; (2019) Network Structures and Dynamics Of Early Dementia Events Recorded in Primary Care Electronic Health Records. In: Kostkova, P and Wood, C and Bosman, A and Grasso, F and Edelstein, M, (eds.) DPH2019: Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Public Health. (pp. p. 127). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): New York, NY, USA. Green open access

[thumbnail of Rossor_po08-mackintosh.pdf]
Preview
Text
Rossor_po08-mackintosh.pdf - Accepted Version

Download (291kB) | Preview

Abstract

Background: Identifying early signs of heterogeneous conditions like dementia is challenging. We used electronic health records (EHR) and data-driven methods in order to represent prodromal dementia as a dynamic temporal network of healthcare events and move beyond reductionist representations of complex syndromes. / Methods: We used UK primary care EHR data from Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) through the CALIBER resource and identified patients with a dementia diagnosis. We constructed a weighted, undirected network. We calculated centrality measures of the network and compared three community detection algorithms, Louvain, InfoMAP and Walktrap. Distinctive temporal communities of events in two year windows were derived, and we explored community membership, interactions and dynamics using evaluation measures including Jaccard distance, modularity, Rand Index and Normalised Mutual Information. / Results: We analysed data from 89,102 patients, where nodes (n=816) were connected to edges (n=392,345) based on the frequency with which two features were recorded in the same time window. Across the whole prodrome, repeated cardiovascular medications accounted for 22% of the network edges, followed by repeated central nervous system medications, accounting for 5% of edges. Cardiovascular conditions had the highest eigen centrality (influence on the entire network structure) and QRISK2 and malignant neoplasms had the greatest betweenness centrality (bridge between events). Louvin had the highest modularity and clustered the temporal network into six communities: The largest community was enriched for respiratory diseases (late-prodrome) and circulatory conditions (mid). Community 2 was enriched for musculoskeletal conditions (late), and Community 3 for administrative events (early) and nervous system conditions (late). In the early prodrome, there were more transitions between communities, however from 10 years to diagnosis, most events occurred within communities. / Conclusion: By understanding the interdependencies of conditions and associated medications across a disease network, we can deepen our understanding of prodromal dementia and create an accurate phenotype of the earliest stages of cognitive decline.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Network Structures and Dynamics Of Early Dementia Events Recorded in Primary Care Electronic Health Records
Event: International Conference on Digital Public Health (DPH2019)
ISBN-13: 9781450372084
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1145/3357729
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1145/3357729
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Neurodegenerative Diseases
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science > Population Science and Experimental Medicine
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Cardiovascular Science > Population Science and Experimental Medicine > MRC Unit for Lifelong Hlth and Ageing
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics > Clinical Epidemiology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091264
Downloads since deposit
101Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item