Dr Graham Shortland
Biography
Dr Graham Shortland qualified from the University of Southampton in 1983. He trained in NHS and academic posts in Southampton, Cardiff and Bristol.
He has published research in the areas of paediatric nutrition, inherited metabolic disease, medical education and clinical leadership. He continues in the role of consultant paediatrician in Cardiff (appointed 1993). He has undertaken varied clinical and leadership roles (Executive Medical Director for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, 2010 to 2019).
His main interest is inherited metabolic disease. UK-wide roles include 6 years as chairman of the British Inherited Metabolic Disease Group, and involvement in the introduction of new UK-wide newborn bloodspot screening programmes.
Forecasting frontier mortality with generalised additive models Mortality rates differ across countries and years, and the country with the lowest mortality has historically tended to change over time. Following the classic Science paper by Oeppen and Vaupel (2002), for any given year a hypothetical mortality ‘frontier’ can be defined as the lower limit of the force of mortality at each age, taken across all countries. It is expected that change in this frontier reflects global technological and medical advances, which may display a more stable trend over time than the patterns in mortality improvement displayed by any particular country.
Employing the model of Hilton et al. (2019), we jointly estimate frontier mortality as well as mortality rates for individual countries. Generalised additive models are used to estimate a smooth set of baseline frontier mortality rates and mortality improvements, and country-level mortality is modelled as a set of smooth,
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The University of Southampton has worked with Royal Mail on a trial of fully autonomous scheduled drone flights. The trial will see the Company use Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flights to deliver Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), COVID testing kits and other mail to the Isles of Scilly.
The Government-funded project, which has been developed in partnership with DronePrep, Skyports, Consortiq Limited, Excalibur Healthcare Services and Windracers Limited, will initially have a particular focus on helping to fight the pandemic by delivering crucial PPE and testing kits to the islands’ most vulnerable and remote communities.
Mail will be flown to the islands’ airport in St. Mary’s by the twin-engine Windracers ULTRA which was designed and built by engineers at the University of Southampton, led by Professor Jim Scanlan. The ULTRA can carry up to 100kg worth of mail at a time – equivalent to a typical delivery round.
A SOUTHAMPTON university will be launching drones as part of a new delivery service. Drones could be used to deliver Covid tests, health and safety equipment and other items to the remote Isles of Scilly. The University of Southampton has teamed up with the Royal Mail to trial the service between the UK mainland and the islands off Cornwall. The the Royal Mail said it will be first time an out-of-sight, autonomous scheduled drone flight has been used between the UK mainland and an island. Part of the trial will also include inter-island parcel deliveries across the Scillies. Parcels will be flown to the islands’ airport in St Mary’s by drone which can carry up to 220lb (100kg) of mail at a time – equivalent to a typical delivery round.