Anthony Torres-Ruesta

What is your name?

My name is Anthony Torres-Ruesta

Can you tell me a bit about your background?

I'm a virologist by training. I've been working on infectious diseases for a while, particularly respiratory infections such as COVID-19 and, when the outbreak started, a little bit of Mpox too.

Are you currently studying?

Yes, I'm doing a Master of Public Health at the University of Cambridge which I'm finishing this summer.

What's your background in health data science?

As part of my training as a scientist, I've been the one producing data in the lab that will feed laboratory registries as well as hospital registries. Then, I got interested in how to design and analyse epidemiological studies and decided to do a master's in public health where I had the chance to work more on data that is part of the healthcare space, like hospital registries, as well as looking at data from infectious disease surveillance and from epidemiological studies.

How did you feel when you were offered the bursary onto the summer school?

I was very happy, because the course was sold out when I was interested in joining it, and the only way to register was by applying for one of these bursaries. On the financial side it helped to cover the stay in Oxford and also funded the fees for the course. I am very appreciative of it.

How have you enjoyed the week?

It's been very nice. It's the first time that I've been able to work on real-world data and real-world evidence. I find it very interesting how you could use health data that has not been originally collected as part of an epidemiological study, but it's been produced and collected in hospitals and different type of registries, to answer clinically relevant questions. It's been very hands on. We had theoretical sessions in the morning, and then we reinforced the theory with practical sessions in the afternoon. So that balance was very nice.

What's been the highlight?

I'm quite interested in health economics. This morning, we had a talk from Rafael Pinedo-Villanueva which was very engaging. He showed how the real-world evidence could also be used for health economic purposes, to quantify how much treatments cost and how we can make decisions about those costs as well.

How will the opportunity help with your future career?

My plan is to back to Peru and join the Ministry of Health after I'm done with my studies, so I would like to push for more data integration there. One of the main key features of this course, was using the OMOP (The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership) platform as a framework for data sharing. I think it would be good to implement that in the country as well as at the regional level. I'd like to start working on that because one of the main issues in Latin America is data fragmentation, so the data produced is not in the same format across countries. That means it's very difficult to share data, particularly when you look at infectious diseases surveillance, which usually happens across borders. So, surveillance data that could be shared in the same format would be very helpful for improved responses to outbreaks, for example.