Research Overview

The UK and India are teaming up in a landmark £1.1 million project to revolutionise the future of telecoms.

With demand for ultra-fast, secure, and scalable networks at an all-time high, the UK-India Future Networks Initiative (UKI-FNI )- will drive cutting-edge research into next-generation telecoms, exploring innovations in the supply chain for hardware and software systems that provide access, connectivity and services for future telecoms networks.

Led by Prof Gerard Parr of the University of East Anglia (UEA), the initiative brings together leading researchers from University of Surrey, University of Southampton, University College London, and King’s College London, alongside key partners from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

The UKI-FNI project, collaborating with scientists, policy makers and engineers in UK and India, will also develop a joint vision and research strategy for the future integration of terrestrial and non-terrestrial telecoms networks, covering 6G, optical, sub-sea and satellite systems and their security management.

There are several technologies and services that are attracting media coverage on a weekly basis, namely the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) by companies and governments, building of large-scale data centres for data storage and cloud services and the importance of quantum computing and quantum security.

While these technologies have separate hardware and software requirements, they all share a common need in that they require connectivity to a high-performance telecoms network that is robust and fast enough to cope with increasing amounts of data at scale.

India is the world’s second-largest telecommunications market and the telecoms sector is strategically important to the UK.

PREDICT-GI-IRON Web Calculator

This project aims to develop and validate PREDICT-GI-IRON, a clinical risk calculator that estimates the 5-year risk of digestive tract cancer in patients with low iron levels, using anonymised data from GP electronic health records.

One in fourteen adults are found to have low iron levels when they have blood tests. Low iron levels can lead to a low blood count (anaemia). Blood loss from the gastrointestinal tract (food pipe/stomach/intestines) is a common cause, is often asymptomatic, and may be due to cancer. Most patients will not have cancer, but some patient groups are at high risk. Therefore, people with low iron levels are commonly referred by their General Practitioner (GP) for urgent investigation with internal camera tests (endoscopy). However, internal camera tests are invasive, and they can cause uncommon, but serious complications. NHS services are under pressure with growing waiting lists.

Current UK guidelines recommend urgent digestive tract investigation when there is not a clear explanation for a new low blood count caused by low iron levels. However, it is not known how risks of digestive tract cancers vary between different groups. Currently there is no reliable way for GPs to accurately know which people with low iron levels are at most risk. If there were, GPs, hospital specialists, patients and endoscopy units could make more informed decisions about care.

We aim to develop and test a clinical risk calculator called PREDICT-GI-IRON for patients with low iron levels, which will calculate their risk of digestive tract cancer in the next 5 years, based on information in their medical records. We will use anonymous data from GP electronic patient records to develop and test this clinical risk calculator, where Dr. Jeannette Chin, as co-investigator, is leading on the UI design and development of this risk web calculator for this project.