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Addressing Addenbrooke’s critical challenges: two perspectives, one goal

In a highly topical conversation, senior members Ajith Parlikad and Nyarie Sithole share insights into the vital work they are doing to improve patient outcomes at Addenbrookes Hospital. Ajith (Dept. of Engineering) has been  working on patient flow modelling to help predict and manage demand for hospital resources. Nyarie’s work on the COVID wards as an Infectious Diseases and Acute Medicine Consultant has focussed on improving patient outcomes, including predicting those patients likely to require support in ICU. Both are passionate about improving patient experiences and outcomes at Addenbrookes.

Join them ‘in conversation’ as they seek to explain more about the critical challenges they are working to address.

A recording of this event is now available. Click here

Seniors’ Spotlight Series
Our ‘Seniors’ Spotlight Series’ provides accessible, short, conversational insights, in an informal ‘podcast’ type format, that has broad intellectual appeal across the College community. This dynamic and exciting series seeks to uncover what our senior members feel passionate about – intellectually, professionally, personally or philanthropically.

About Nyarie Sithole
Nyarie is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases and an Acute Medicine Consultant at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. He was one of the first doctor’s to look after a COVID positive patient. Since May, Nyarie’s research interests have expanded to include both clinical and research work into long COVID cases, and he has set up one of the UK’s first long COVID clinics.  After completing his MBChB degree in Zimbabwe, he was awarded the British Chevening Scholarship to undertake the MSc in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at LSTM (Liverpool), where he received the Glen Williams Prize for the best student. Driven by his passion and vast experience in managing HIV patients, he was awarded the 2011 Evelyn Trust Research Fellowship and built on that to be awarded a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship. He attained his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is passionate about building bridges with academic clinicians in low resource settings and is actively involved in setting up collaborations with researchers in Africa and Mexico. He is a member of the Royal College of Physicians (London) and previously served as a question bank contributor for their Medical Masterclass website.

Ajith Kumar Parlikad
Ajith Parlikad is Head of the Asset Management Group for the Institute for Manufacturing and a Governing Body Fellow. His current work focusses on two key activities. The first, and the one he will talk about during this event is predicting demand for critical resources at Addenbrooke’s hospital during the COVID wave(s). Since April, he has worked closely with clinicians and the operations team at Addenbrooke’s to predict patient admissions, model patient flows through the hospital, and estimate subsequent demand for critical hospital resources such as general ward and ICU beds, ventilators, oxygen, and staff. The application of a stochastic discrete event simulation approach provided a more informative prediction of the demand for critical resources compared to deterministic approaches that were in place, and helped management to prepare for the crisis.