Kym Snell

Biography

Kym joined the Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences in June 2016, and has an active research and teaching role within the Centre for Prognosis Research. Prior to this she worked at the University of Birmingham in prognostic and diagnostic research.

Kym has a BSc (Hons) in Statistics from the University of Reading and an MSc in Medical Statistics from the University of Leicester. She later completed a PhD at the University of Birmingham in statistical methods for developing and validating prognostic models. She continues to work in the field of prognosis research, with a particular interest in individualised prediction, survival outcomes, and the synthesis of individual participant data (IPD) from multiple studies/sources.

She leads the Centre’s training course on ‘Statistical methods for risk prediction and prognostic models’, and is an Associate Editor of the journal Diagnostic and Prognostic Research. 

Research and scholarship

Kym’s research is currently funded by an NIHR SPCR Launching Fellowship. She is investigating various methodological challenges relating to the use of individual participant data (IPD) from multiple studies or sources for the purpose of developing and validating prediction models. This includes looking at the sample size requirements for prediction modelling studies, handling of missing data across multiple studies, and reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analysis studies for prediction models.

Kym is also involved in a range of applied research projects including IPPIC stillbirth (predicting stillbirth in pregnancy), IPPIC FGR (predicting fetal growth restriction in pregnancy), Back-UP (predicting outcomes in individuals with back and neck pain), STRATIFY-BP (stratifying antihypertensive treatments in multi-morbid hypertensives for personalised management of blood pressure).

Teaching

Kym teaches on courses run at Keele University:

• Lecturing on the 3-day training course ‘Statistical methods for risk prediction and prognostic models’ that runs twice a year

• Lecturing on the 3-day training course ‘Prognosis Research Summer School (PROGRESS)’

• Lecturing on the 3^rd year BSc Mathematics module on Medical Statistics

• Small group teaching on the MBChB