Workshop with Prof. Samuel Relton from the University of Leeds
From 2 to 4 August 2026, as part of the AGEING-CZ project (OP JAK), we organised a scientific workshop at which we had the honour of hosting Prof. Samuel Relton from the University of Leeds. The meeting was the first working session between representatives of the CzechHTA research group, that is the CTU Health Data Lab, and representatives from the British university. The main aims of the workshop were to introduce our respective data ecosystems and methods to one another, to agree on the first concrete joint scientific deliverable, and to set a framework for long-term collaboration.
We discussed the way we work with national health data. We presented the linkage of administrative sources and registries, analyses of patient pathways, publicly available indicators of care quality, and possible solutions based on artificial intelligence. Prof. Samuel Relton, in turn, introduced us to the British electronic frailty index (eFI2) and the follow-on tools for predicting falls, mortality, and care needs in an ageing population.
The expert discussion turned on a single central question: whether a risk score built on British clinical records can be transported and validated on Czech data, which have different strengths and weaknesses. It became clear that the two teams complement one another rather than overlap. The Czech setting offers nationwide coverage and rich data linkage, while the British side brings a sophisticated and internationally recognised instrument. The tools that the Czech group has developed for interoperability and terminology mapping, moreover, proved to be directly applicable to the independent validation of the British index on Czech data.
The meeting gave rise to several directions for future collaboration. The first concrete deliverable is to be joint work on validating the frailty index on Czech data. We further agreed to prepare doctoral and post-doctoral projects and a joint international grant application at the intersection of data science and health policy. The agreed framework also includes the exchange of doctoral students and post-docs, joint publications, and a planned visit by Prof. Relton to Prague in the autumn of 2026.
This event was supported by the project Ageing of the Population and Related Challenges for Health and Social Systems (AGEING-CZ), registration number CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008743, co-financed by the European Union from the ERDF/ESF under OP JAK.
