Case Studies

Dr Charlotte Davies Research Associate - Health Economics

My research interests are the competition, regulation and performance of medical devices. I am also interested in issues of extrapolation of survival curves for economic evaluation. These interests are pursued mainly through the analysis of large individual patient level panel data-sets using econometric techniques.

The benefits of using Grace for High Performance Computing

The research areas I focus on usually involve analyzing large individual patient level data-sets.  Analysis of these datasets can take a long time to run on my personal computer.  Offsetting the computational aspect to Grace enables me to continue using my personal computer for other tasks, whilst my STATA models run on Grace autonomously.

Having access to the additional software which Grace offers is also a major benefit to my work as it allows me to test applications at no additional costs whilst not having to install them on my system. 

The HPC support staff are very prompt when I have a problem or query and provide frequent updates on changes to the service.

Grace has been used for the following research projects:

1. An economic analysis of hip prostheses – using the National Joint Registry and Hospital Episode Statistics data – part of my Arthritis Research UK Foundation Fellowship. 2011 - present

2. Extrapolation of hip prosthesis survival curves using Swedish Joint Registry data – part of my MRC funded PhD studentship. 2007-2011