Dr Victor Vickland
Dr Victor Vickland is a Research Fellow at the Dementia Collaborative Research Centre (DCRC) for Assessment and Better Care Outcomes at the University of NSW. He has qualifications in health sciences (PhD UTS 2006) and clinical psychology (MClinPsych UL 1978) with training and expertise in research methodologies, statistical analysis and software programming tools. Victor leads a research project that is focusing on computer modelling of dementia management. The aim of the project is to develop and evaluate a computer model that can improve understanding of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia and introduce virtual experiments into dementia research. He is also investigating new methods for the visualisation of clinical information using computer animations that can be applied to individual patients and to groups of patients. His previous experience includes research focusing on methods for retrieval of clinical information and application of internet search technologies to support information needs of medical practitioners.
Research Interests
Dr Vickland has long-term research interests in the development of virtual experiments in which hypothetical treatment interventions can be tested prior to being evaluated in clinical trials. Experiments involve development of simulated clinical scenarios, parameter variation, optimisation and sensitivity analysis. Victor is interested in creating an experimental framework with libraries of virtual patients and environments within which patients interact with each other. Specific areas of interest include management of depression, aggression and anxiety in patients with dementia.
Victor’s current research project is funded by the NHMRC and becomes one of the first International attempts to create a dynamic and interactive model of dementia management. The computer model that is being developed will allow ‘what-if’ analyses to be performed and will assist clinicians, patients, caregivers and policy makers to evaluate the health implications of their choices, expressed for example in survival and risk analyses. This project makes significant use of cognitive psychology, computational modelling techniques and agent based programming.
Research Areas
- Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia
- Computer modelling of disease management
- Agent-Based modelling of individual and group behaviour
- Virtual experiment and clinical decision support
Funding Sources
- PDCRC. The post-doctoral research fellow funded by the Dementia Collaborative Research Centre (Australian Government Initiative) 2007-2009.
- NHMRC. Dementia Research Grant (510307) $380K funding for 2008-2010. Investigators: Vickland, V., Brodaty, H., O’Connor, D., McDonnell, G. and Low, LF.
Current Research Projects
Past Research Projects
- Quick Clinical. Research and development of the Internet-based information retrieval system focusing on the information needs of medical practitioners and evidence-based medicine (2001-2006)
- Semantic Heterodyne. Development of new method for bar-coding medical documents stored in information retrieval systems with semantic “signatures” that reflect the content of each document (2005-2007)
- Virtual EEG / ECG / HRV. Development of an automated data acquisition and analysis system for non-invasive measurement of physiological parameters used in the complementary medicine research (2001-2003)
Patents
- Coiera, E. and Vickland, V. - A system and method for searching data sources. A system for obtaining information from data sources and method for obtaining information from a plurality of heterogenous data sources. PCT/AU2002/001567 granted 27 Feb 2004.
Recent Peer-reviewed Publications
- Vickland, V. and Brodaty, H. (2008) Application of statecharts and Agent Based modelling in representing clinically relevant aspects of dementia and depression in Alzheimer's disease. Proceedings of the 12th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, p.93-97, 29 June-2 July 2008 Orlando US
- Vickland, V. and Brodaty, H. (2008) Visualisation of clinical and non-clinical characteristics of patients with behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on BioMedical Visualization, p.23-28, 9-11 July 2008 London UK
- Vickland, V. and McDonnell, G. (2008) When accuracy matters: Prevalence, incidence and mortality rate in an Agent Based model of dementia management. Proceedings of the 26th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society, p.1-8, 20-24 July 2008 Athens Greece
- Coiera E, Vickland V. (2008) Is relevance relevant? User relevance ratings do not predict the impact of Internet search engines on decisions. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 15: 542-545.