Conrad Harrison

I graduated from Imperial College London in 2015 with distinctions in my medical degree and a first class intercalated BSc in neuroscience. I then moved to the Oxford Deanery where I completed Academic Foundation and Core Surgical Training programmes. I now hold an honorary contract with Oxford University Hospitals as a Specialty Registrar in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and have taken time out of clinical training to complete a DPhil.

I am interested in the way we measure the outcomes of reconstructive surgery. Accurate and valid outcome measures are important for studying the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different treatments, auditing care quality, and helping patients to make informed decisions about the risks and benefits of surgery.

My research involves the application of contemporary psychometrics and computer science to surgical outcome measurement. For example, developing computerised adaptive tests that can predict patient reported outcome scores from fewer, individualised questions, and exploring the potential for machine learning algorithms to autonomously assess surgical images.

I am supervised by Prof Dominic Furniss and Mr Jeremy Rodrigues at NDORMS, Mr Marc Swan at the NDS, and externally by Dr Chris Sidey-Gibbons at the University of Texas. My research was funded by a Clarendon Scholarship before I started my NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship in April 2020.