Test the validity of an NHS number : Medical::NHSNumber

Some more work on the Medical:: namespace, trying to get more people interested and perhaps even contributing. The newest module, Medical::NHSNumber can validate a 10-digit new-style NHS number. This is done using the Modulus 11 algorithm and a check digit.

UCL Perl Users Group

I've been trying to start a Perl users group for people within (and outside) of UCL that use Perl to get together and do fun stuff. Maybe we could do a short presentation as this years London Perl Workshop ?
If you happen to be interested in this, please get in contact. I will try to update the site with more resources as time goes by.

Medical::DukePTP : calculate the Duke pre-test probability of Coronary Artery Disease

Important diagnostic and prognostic outcomes can be predicted from information collected by the physician as a part of the initial assessment. Despite the fact that much of the clinical information collected by a physician is "soft" or subjective data, predictions of outcome based on the information from the initial evaluation are accurate and can be deployed in order to identify "high" and "low" risk patients.

Medical::DukePTP implements a single function which quantifies the Duke pre-test probability of a patient having significant Coronary Artery Disease. This is accomplished by taking into consideration symptom typicality, sex, age and cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes or high cholesterol.

The method is based on:

Pryor D.B. et al., "Value of the history and physical in
identifying patients at increased risk of CAD", Ann Int Med 1993, 118:81-90


The PubMed entry can be found here.

Incidentally, this is the first module in the Medical namespace on CPAN, something that I hope will provide some inspiration to others to contribute their code from this domain. Suggestions and corrections are as always more than welcome.

URI::ParseSearchString 3.2 is now out!

Just a quick not to say that a new version of your beloved module is now out and about.

Changes include the addition of new search engines, mostly from Portugal and some speed increases.

The Changefile:

3.2 Added MS Bing to list of engines (forgot to to so at v. 3.1)
Added Sapo from Portugal (Thanks Fransisco) and about 10 more .pt engines and newspapers : Iol, Clix, Aeiou, Rpt, Record, Correiomanha and XL
Some improvements over speed (Thanks once more Fransisco)
Replaced big engine list with a flat one, easier to read.
Added fastbrowsersearch.com and Yahoo answers.


Have more engines to add from your country, let me know!

Dear friendfeed: please deduplicate feeds!

Back in Nestoria, we gave a tremendous amount of effort in the quality of the final product that users see ; this applied to both the design but mainly to the quality of the individual listings. This involved detecting spam and duplicated listings and was a very complicated process and was subject of constant evolution and tweaking.

So now I was wondering, why doesn't FriendFeed do the same? Instead of spamming us with the same entry from the same person via different social networking routes, it can easily group them together into one and collapse them so only a single element will be displayed. See below for a proof of concept using terrible editing skills.

Multiple entries:



Single entry:

Optimising Management of Angina (OMA)

The first version of the Optimising Management of Angina (OMA) website is now live! OMA is a cluster randomized controlled trial of a multi-faceted decision support and educational intervention within chest pain clinics across across England. Angina is a chest pain with a strangling sensation caused by the narrowing of the coronary arteries of the heart. Angina is one of the initial manifestations of coronary heart disease but still remains grossly understudied due to the fact that diagnosis of stable angina pectoris is based solely on the characterization of the pain as elicited by the doctor. Many patients with typical symptoms of stable angina are not diagnosed as angina and factors such as sex, ethnicity and age may influence the physician’s final recommendations for diagnostic testing such as coronary angiography. OMA looks at ways of improving the care of people suffering with such chest pain or discomfort and looking into the fluctuations in the quality of care they receive. OMA is a collaboration between University College London, University of Bristol and Queen Mary University London.

Its built with CMS Made Simple, Perl and love.

New pastures

Its been a while since I've written an entry and for good reason. There's been a lot of change and perhaps the biggest thing is that I am sadly not working for Lokku any more. After three wonderful years, filled with learning and fun, I have decided to move on and do something that is closer to my academic background.
I am now employed as a senior research associate at University College London. Essentially, I am the data manager for the Cardiovascular disease research Linking Bespoke studies and Electronic Records (CALIBER) consortium which is primarily run by the Clinical Epidemiology Group. The project essentially creates a linkage between primary care databases such as the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) and CHD-related databases, in this case the Myocardial Infarction Audit Project (MINAP).
Despite the sudden shift between the commercial and academic world, so far I am very happy and I find things challenging and interesting.

A big thank you to everybody at Lokku, I wouldn't be where I am now without your help.