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 Oxford 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 (PhD) at the University of Oxford, where I am an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow and Clarendon Scholar. 

I am interested in how we measure the outcomes of reconstructive surgery and what we do with this information. Valid, accurate and interpretable outcome measures are important for studying the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different treatments, benchmarking exercises, clinical commissioning, and helping people to make informed decisions about the risks and benefits of surgery.

My research applies contemporary psychometrics and data science to improve the way we measure the effectiveness and value of healthcare interventions. For example, by 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 or patients' natural language. I additionally hold a scholarship at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, where I have contributed to evidence review for NHS commissioning decisions. 

I am supervised by Prof Dominic Furniss and Mr Jeremy Rodrigues at NDORMS, Mr Marc Swan at the Spires Cleft Centre, and externally by Dr Chris Sidey-Gibbons at the University of Texas. We work closely with teams at the Psychometrics Centre (University of Cambridge), the PROVE Center (Harvard University), and the MD Anderson Center for INSPiRED Cancer Care.