Award for CRD academic

Posted on 30 April 2015

CRD Senior Clinical Academic Bob Phillips named SPARKS Young Investigator of the Year

CRD Senior Clinical Academic Bob Phillips has been awarded the SPARKS Young Investigator of the Year 2015 for his work into child and adolescent health research.

The award was presented at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health's Annual Conference, held in Birmingham on 30th April. The SPARKS award, which is funded by Sport Aiding Medical Research for Kids (SPARKS), recognises excellence in research and is offered once a year to an outstanding young medical research worker in British paediatrics.

The award recognises his extensive clinical research, including research into reducing hospital admissions for children with febrile neutropenia, a potentially life-threatening condition developed during cancer treatment.

All patients are given an aggressive course of antibiotics which improves outcomes but can often result in unnecessary hospitalisation. Bob established an international collaboration of researchers, clinicians and patient carers including 19 research groups from 15 countries who shared data on over 5,000 episodes of the life-threatening condition. This data was combined and analysed to develop a 'risk prediction model' to work out which children are at greatest risk of severe infection. Clinicians will be able to use the model to better predict risk of severe infection, and tailor treatment accordingly to lower the risk to the patient. Children with low risk may be able to go home, whereas those at high risk may need careful monitoring and a bed beside the nurses' station.

Bob is currently building on this important work through an NIHR fellowship.