Bala Kadirvelu
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bala is a postdoctoral research associate jointly at the Dept. of Computing and the Dept. of Bioengineering.His current research focuses on digital healthcare for neurodegenerative diseases from full-body motion analysis using wearables in daily life and using machine learning to analyse the data to develop novel digital biomarkers. He obtained his PhD in Computational Neuroscience from the University of Reading in 2018. Prior to his academic career, he worked in the software industry for 10 years.
Research Brief
It takes a long time to establish if a new therapy for neurodegenerative diseases is working as clinicians currently gauge disease progression ‘by eye’ instead of using measurable and objective methods in a real-world setting. In our research, we monitor patients’ behaviour on a 24/7 basis using smart-sensors on the 4 extremities to obtain a continuous understanding of their motor capabilities in real-life. The motor behaviour data is then analysed using machine learning techniques to derive new digital biomarkers, which can capture individual variations in disease progression. This novel approach will significantly reduce the time taken to detect disease progression, potentially reducing the duration of future clinical trials.
Lab Publications
Variation in global COVID-19 symptoms by geography and by chronic disease: A global survey using the COVID-19 Symptom Mapper
2022Balasundaram Kadirvelu, Gabriel Burcea, Jennifer K Quint, Ceire E Costelloe, A Aldo Faisal
EClinicalMedicine