Understanding the individual clinical course of severe Covid-19: a series of n-of-1 studies

Although Corononavirus infection is usually mild for most people, around 5% become very unwell with breathing problems and need admission to Intensive Care Units (ICU) for advanced clinical care. Here, aspects of their clinical condition (including breathing, pulse and blood pressure) are checked continuously and multiple tests are run several times a day to check the condition of vital organs like theheart, lung, liver and kidney. Our aim is to study the pattern of these measurements to understand how the disease progresses over time in very ill patients with severe COVID-19 and, how these, along with physical traits of the patient such as age, gender and ethnicity), pre-existing illnesses and treatments are linked with the chance of recovery. Following the necessary approvals from the NHS, we plan to use information from individual patients admitted to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary ICU to develop personalised medicine tools to help doctors to make decisions in ICU.