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Full NameProfessor William Watson

School of Medicine

University College Dublin

Webpage:people.ucd.ie

Email Address:Email hidden; Javascript is required.

Research Fields
  • genetics, genomics and molecular biology
  • cancer/oncology
  • epidemiology/population health research
  • artificial intelligence/machine learning/data analytics
Postgrad Medical Specialties
  • Surgery
  • Pathology
Medical Subspecialties
  • Clinical Trials
  • Health Informatics
  • Oncology
  • Other
Other Medical Specialties:

Urology, Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology

My Work

Irish Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry (IPCOR) has established a national prospective prostate cancer clinical quality registry. IPCOR has collected a comprehensive clinical dataset on 6816 men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer from 16 hospitals across Ireland with up to three years follow up clinical data. Patient reported outcomes measurements (PROMs) were also collected from a subset of 873 men to evaluate their quality of life. Survival data for the men in the dataset will be updated yearly. IPCOR has engaged with clinicians (Urologists, Radiation Oncologists and Medical Oncologists) and scientists and is part of the All Island Cancer Research institution. It has also established a Lived Experience Advisory Panel to provide their insights and ideas during the establishment and conduct of the research projects.
As a clinical quality registry, IPCOR has provided evidence-based recommendations and reports to the NCCP and the hospitals. Its members have also developed clinical decision making tools and integrated biomarkers into risk calculators to improve patient stratification into approriate treatments.
The registry represents a rich resource to develop a range of projects ranging from outcome, guidelines development, epidemiological, clinical decision making and biomarker integration and validation.

Jalali A, Foley RW, Maweni RM, Murphy K, Lundon DJ, Lynch T, Power R, O'Brien F, O'Malley KJ, Galvin DJ, Durkan GC, Murphy TB, Watson RW. (2020) A risk calculator to inform the need for a prostate biopsy: a rapid access clinic cohort. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2020 Jul 3;20(1):148.

Moghaddam, S.; Jalali, A.; O’Neill, A.; Murphy, L.; Gorman, L.; Reilly, A.-M.; Heffernan, Á.; Lynch, T.; Power, R.; O’Malley, K.J.; Taskèn, K.A.; Berge, V.; Solhaug, V.-A.; Klocker, H.; Murphy, T.B.; Watson, R.W. Integrating Serum Biomarkers into Prediction Models for Biochemical Recurrence Following Radical Prostatectomy. Cancers 2021, 13, 4162. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13164162

Jalali A, Kitching M, Martin K, Richardson C, Murphy TB, FitzGerald SP, Watson RW, Perry AS. (2021) Integrating inflammatory serum biomarkers into a risk calculator for prostate cancer detection. Sci Rep. 11(1):2525.

Potential Projects

The student would be supervised by Professor William Watson (Professor of Cancer Biology, School of Medicine and Conway Institute Fellow, UCD and lead of the Prostate Cancer Research Consortium (PCRC)) and Associate Clinical Professor David Galvin (Consultant Urologist in the Mater Misericordia University Hospital and St Vincents University Hospital and PI of IPCOR).
They would work with the PIs to develop a proposal which could cover a range of projects using the IPCOR data and clinical samples of the PCRC bioresource. They would be supported by the clinical and research groups of the two PIs and national and international collaboration.