Principal Supervisor: Dr Paul Yoo (Reader in Computer Science in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and BIDA Deputy Director for Knowledge Exchange., Birkbeck, University of London)
Co-Supervisor: Prof Hannah Kuper (Professor of Epidemiology & Director of the International Centre for Evidence in Disability, LSHTM)
Project Description
This project aims to improve healthcare accessibility for people with disabilities in the UK by developing a geospatial accessibility model using advanced machine learning techniques. By integrating publicly available big data sources, such as OpenStreetMap (OSM), WheelMap, and patient reviews from platforms like Yelp, the project will analyse facility infrastructure and user feedback to generate accessibility scores for healthcare facilities. The model will focus on wheelchair users while being adaptable to other disabilities, enabling individuals and caregivers to make informed decisions about suitable healthcare options. Utilising tools like Transformer-based masked autoencoders, the project will uncover complex patterns in the data and create a user-friendly web or mobile application to provide accessibility insights.
In collaboration with the International Centre for Evidence in Disability (ICED) at LSHTM and the Birkbeck Institute for Data Analytics (BIDA), the project will combine expertise in disability research and data science. The application will be validated through user testing with disabled individuals and caregivers, ensuring it reflects real-world accessibility needs. Insights from the project will also contribute to urban planning and healthcare policy by offering data-driven recommendations for improving facility accessibility in the UK. The candidate for this project will require strong quantitative training, such as an MSc in data science, statistics or other relevant sciences to effectively design and implement the advanced analytical methods central to the research. The project not only addresses an urgent societal need but also showcases the power of interdisciplinary research to solve real-world challenges.
Subject Areas/Keywords:
Healthcare accessibility, machine learning, big geospatial data, disability inclusion
Further details about the project may be obtained from:
Principal Supervisor: Dr Paul Yoo – p.yoo@bbk.ac.uk
Co-Supervisor: Prof. Hannah Kuper – Hannah.Kuper@lshtm.ac.uk
Further information about PhDs at Birkbeck is available from:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221006040825/https://www.bbk.ac.uk/prospective/research/
The Bloomsbury Colleges 