Laura Armitage

Biography

Laura graduated from Cardiff University Medical School in 2010. As an undergraduate she was awarded the medical school's 1st Prize Presentation in 2009 for medical student research. The same research project was awarded commendation from the International League Against Epilepsy's Gower's Medical Student Award in 2009.

Laura completed her General Practice Speciality Training in Oxford, during which time she was elected Thames Valley Representative on the national Associates in Training (AiT) Committee at the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP, 2014-2015). She was subsequently elected Chair of the RCGP AIT Committee (2015-2016). In 2016 Laura was nominated for, and awarded, a Rising Star of General Practice in Pulse Magazine's annual Primary Care Power 50 feature, for her work as Chair of the RCGP’s AiT Committee.

In 2017, after completing her GP training, Laura was awarded an NIHR CLAHRC General Practice Fellowship at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge. During this time she worked with the Health Behaviours Team investigating the use of mobile device applications to support medication adherence.

Laura returned to Oxford in 2018 to take up post as Clinical Researcher in Digital Health, at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. During this time Laura worked on studies with NHS patients and partners, investigating the potential of digital health technologies to improve defined areas of NHS patient care, such as hip fracture rehabilitation and hypertension diagnostics (see the SHINE study page for more information).

Alongside research into digital interventions for better health care, Laura has a particular interest in epidemiology and health screening.  In 2020, Laura was awarded a Wellcome Trust PhD Training Fellowship for Clinicians to investigate the health and economic benefits of a novel pathway for detecting undiagnosed hypertension in adults, using routinely collected data. Laura is undertaking her DPhil at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, supervised by Professors Andrew Farmer, Peter Watkinson, Stavros Petrou and Dr Thomas Fanshawe.

Laura continues to work as a General Practitioner in Oxfordshire alongside her doctoral training.

Research and scholarship

Laura’s doctoral fellowship from the Wellcome Trust is supporting her in completing the research project entitled Investigating the health and economic benefits of a novel pathway for detecting undiagnosed hypertension in adults, using routinely collected data.

The research project aims to answer the question: Would a system for identifying undiagnosed high blood pressure in hospital patients improve patient health and NHS spending?
When blood flows at high pressure around the body, this is known as hypertension. Diagnosing and treating hypertension is important. Hypertension can cause damage, including strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure and other serious illnesses. There are more than 5 million people currently living in England with undiagnosed hypertension.1 We need to improve how we identify people with undiagnosed hypertension.

One way to identify more people with hypertension could be using people's blood pressure measurements when they're admitted to hospital. This is now possible because most hospitals have now to now using electronic systems to record blood pressure rather than paper blood pressure charts. I will design a calculation that can run within these electronic systems to predict whether patents in hospital have undiagnosed hypertension. I will then look into whether the patients identified by the calculation become diagnosed with hypertension by their GP, when they leave hospital. I will explore the impact on health for those patients who remain undiagnosed. Finally, I will estimate the health and cost benefit of using my calculation to identify and treat people with undiagnosed hypertension sooner.

There is major potential for improving care and making an impact with this work: screening for hypertension using hospital blood pressure measurements could help diagnose an extra 1 million people each year.

Teaching

Laura presently supervises University of Oxford medical students in completing research projects. Laura is a clinical tutor in her role as a General Practitioner, supervising and teaching medical students and GP Associates in Training (AiTs). Previously, Laura has volunteered as a Teaching Associate for Postgraduate Medicine at Green Templeton College (2018-2020) and was an examiner for the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge (2017-2018).