Can mathematics revolutionise health care and save lives?

What made you choose to study mathematics at QUT?

It all started in high school when a great maths teacher inspired me to pursue a mathematics degree at uni. He showed me how brilliant maths was and all the problems it could solve already in high school. Because of that, I always had an affinity with maths.

Could you tell us about your research in the School of Mathematical Sciences?

My research is all about elective surgery, waiting lists, and how we can use mathematics to fix the elective surgery problem. Right now, in Australia, elective surgery waiting lists are longer than ever. Since March 2020, the number of patients waiting over a year for surgery has almost tripled. Fundamentally, this is a mathematical problem. My research looks at how we can take patient data and use a mathematical formula to better prioritise these patients.

Can you explain the dynamic priority scoring system and how it's different from the current one?

Currently, in Australia, elective surgery patients are prioritised according to three distinct categories. However, that system sometimes isn't fair or transparent, because the definition of patients as numbers 1,2 and 3 can be quite subjective. We propose a dynamic priority scoring system comprising several key components. The first is a mathematical formula. This part of our dynamic priority scoring system prioritises patients, according to a score between zero and one. This is so doctors can assess the patient, and then enter a set of clinical factors, with which the current patient presents. By using a mathematical algorithm, we're able to get a score between zero and one, depending on how severe the problems are, relative to other patients undergoing the same procedure. We found that just by prioritising patients, according to the ratio between their current waiting time, and how long they should be waiting, we can achieve much more equitable outcomes. The dynamic priority scoring system means that over time, patients accrue a priority score relative to their clinical needs. By allowing category one patients to wait a day or two longer, we can get low-priority category three patients saving months off their waiting time. I'll leave the others to think about whether that's fair or not, but our research shows that it brings everyone's ratio of how long they're waiting proportional to how long they should be waiting much more even, which is more equitable.

How will patients waiting for elective surgery benefit from this? 

I think patients can be much more assured in their spots on the waiting lists using a dynamic price scoring system. Because it's using mathematical formulas, and clear priority scores, using a simulation model, we're able to predict when a patient might be able to enter surgery. Using data and historical information about the number of patients entering the waiting lists during certain times of the year for third procedure types, they can better understand when they might receive surgery. Another positive is that they can be much more assured that their spot on the waitlist is only going to change according to other people in their priority.

Tell us what it’s like to study a research degree?

Doing a PhD is to solve a problem that no one else has ever done before.  The challenging part of a PhD is that while the problem hasn’t been solved before, your job is to connect all the existing research, and then introduce your thoughts throughout your PhD.

Even though a PhD is an independent research project, there is a wide support network available to you as a research student. Your first port of call is your supervisor. Then you have an associate supervisor and your main principal supervisor. These are the people who are experts in their respective fields and will be helping you along your research degree journey. With my PhD project, we're working with a hospital, so we have a whole team of surgeons and clinical staff as our partner hospital, who can provide us with specific industry-based knowledge.

What myths can you bust about a maths career?

The biggest one is that you must be a genius to pursue maths at university. For me, doing a maths degree at university is no different in terms of difficulty from doing any other degree at university. Maths can lead you to several careers and that's one of the reasons why I chose it. People might not be good at maths in high school, but that doesn't mean you won't do well in a mathematics degree at university. In high school, you're learning about why math exists, and how can you use your learning just the fundamental formulas, index laws, and even just key building blocks of math. At university, it's all about problem-solving, and how you can apply all the building blocks you've learned in high school, and combine them, adding some more knowledge on top of that, and seeing how it can be used in the real world.

What advice do you have for someone considering studying mathematics at university? 

Just go for it. What I found is that mathematics is a degree that gives you the most amount of career options. That's why I chose maths. Everything fundamentally is underpinned by maths, any industry, any business, or any problem, has quite a large mathematical aspect.

Often the maths career titles are hidden and very few have the role title, ‘Mathematician’. You’re more likely to find maths graduates working as data scientists, scientists, operations research analysts, statisticians, or applied mathematical consultants.

What else can a budding mathematician do to prepare?

Programming is a fundamental skill because that's often how you implement a potential solution. Learning programming is as easy as watching programming tutorials on YouTube. There are many high-quality videos available to give you a head start. Building a portfolio about some of the projects you've done is a useful tool to show exactly what you're capable of. These problems and projects in your portfolio, don't have to solve anything big, it could be a minor problem you might have in your life or at your work.

What is the difference between some of the maths majors?

At QUT, there are three main majors; operations research, statistics, and applied and computational mathematics. All majors have similar units in the first year. As you progress into the second and third year of a mathematics degree, it branches off into its majors. Operations research is all about the optimising rule of processes. Statistics is how we can use data to make predictions, analyse the paths, and use that to make inferences about what potentially to do next. Applying computational mathematics is about modelling the real world. No matter what problem there is, any of the majors can approach it differently. In the real world, that's how multidisciplinary teams work, getting people from all backgrounds together to solve a problem.

You've combined maths, data science and healthcare. What other combinations could future students consider?

I think there's a real opportunity in applying maths and data science to fields that historically, haven't had the chance to implement those processes. Every level of law and politics is a field that existed long before computers. Using skills in maths and data science, to change the way those fields are run, sounds particularly exciting to me.

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