Schenelle Dlima

Title: Frailty progression and maintaining independence to age in place: can routine data help?

PhD summary

During old age, people can struggle to remain independent and in their own homes, and this is often driven by social determinants of health.

This project will use mixed-methods and PPIE to explore social determinants of health, such as caring and housing, and how these support ageing in place. It will also explore how health data collected routinely by the NHS can help in frailty prevention, prediction, and clinical management. This would involve engaging with different stakeholders such as clinicians, community-dwelling older adults, persons with frailty, and possibly caregivers.

Dates

September 2022 - September 2025

Funding

Dunhill Medical trust / NiHR / University of Manchester PhD Studentship

Institution name

The University of Manchester

Supervisors

Discipline area

Healthy Ageing

Short biography 

My academic background is in biomedical science and global health. I worked in a digital health start-up based in India for two years where I created content on digital health, artificial intelligence, and preventive health behaviours. This included scientific journal articles, long-form blogs, microblogs, infographics, social media posts, and white papers. I look forward to widening my skills set by engaging in mixed-methods research during my PhD.

Publications

Dlima SD, Shevade S, Menezes SR, Ganju A. Digital Phenotyping in Health Using Machine Learning Approaches: Scoping Review. JMIR Bioinform Biotech 2022;3(1):e39618. doi: 10.2196/39618

Ganju A, Menezes SR, Dlima SD, Shevase S. Machine learning-driven recommender systems to improve engagement with health content in a low-resource setting: Poster. ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) [Preprint]. Doi: 10.1145/3460112.3471976

Contact details

Email: schenelle.dlima@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk