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14 December 2022 | Story André Damons | Photo André Damons
Dr Michael Pienaar, Senior Lecturer and specialist in the UFS Department of Paediatrics and Child Health being presented to the acting Chancellor by his supervisor Prof Stephen Brown.

A lecturer from the University of the Free State (UFS) says the need to improve the care of seriously ill children is a vital part of reducing preventable deaths and diseases, and this led him to investigate the use of artificial neural networks to develop models for the prediction of patient outcomes in children with severe illness. The study was done for his PhD thesis. 

This forms the basis for the PhD thesis of Dr Michael Pienaar, Senior Lecturer and specialist in the UFS Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, called, The Development and Validation of Predictive Models for Paediatric Critical Illness in Children in Central South Africa using Artificial Neural Networks. His thesis reports the development and testing of several machine learning models designed to help healthcare workers identify seriously ill children early in a range of resource-limited settings. Combining a systematic literature search and Delphi technique with clinical data from 1 032 participants, this research led to significant progress towards implementable models for community health workers in clinical practice.

Care for critically ill children is a mission and calling 

Dr Pienaar graduated with a PhD specialising in Paediatrics on Monday (12 December) during the Faculty of Health Sciences’ December graduation ceremony. It took him three years to complete this degree. His supervisor was Prof Stephen Brown, Principal Specialist and Head of the Division of Paediatric Cardiology in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the UFS. Prof Nicolaas Luwes and Dr EC George were his co-supervisors. 

“I have been working in paediatric critical care since 2019 and see the care of critically ill children as my mission and calling in life. At the outset of the project, I was interested in approaches to complex phenomena and wanted to investigate new methods for tackling these in healthcare. 

“I have been interested in technology since childhood and in collaborating with other disciplines since I joined the university in 2019. Machine learning seemed like a great fit that could incorporate these interests and yield meaningful clinical results,” explains Dr Pienaar the reason why he chose this topic for his thesis.

He hopes that, in time, this work will lead to the implementation of integrated machine learning models to improve care and clinical outcomes for children in South Africa. From a scholarship perspective, he continues, his hope is that this work draws interest to this field in clinical research and encourages a move towards incorporating these new methods, as well as skills in areas such as coding and design in the armamentarium of a new generation of clinicians.

Medicine chooses you

According to Dr Pienaar, he always had broad interests, of which medicine is one. “I am very grateful to have found my way in medicine and am humbled and privileged to be allowed to walk with children and their families on a difficult and important journey. I believe this profession will choose you and put you where you are needed if you give it time and are prepared to listen.”

He describes graduating as a complicated ending to this period of his life and the beginning of a next chapter. He was humbled by the graduation ceremony. 

“It was wonderful to graduate with undergraduates and postgraduates in my profession – I felt great pride and solidarity joining these new colleagues and specialists in taking the oath. I am certainly relieved, proud, excited, and happy. I am also very grateful to the university, my promotors, colleagues, friends, and family for supporting me through this process. I must confess, it is also slightly bittersweet, I loved working on this and do miss it, but look forward to the next exciting project. 

“I would like to thank my Head of Department, Dr (Nomakhuwa) Tabane, my supervisors, my family and friends once again. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the National Research Foundation (NRF) as well as the University of the Free State for their assistance with funding this research.”

News Archive

UFS academics to present papers at Conference on Calvin Research
2010-07-05

Prof. Dolf Britz, Director: Jonathan Edwards Center Africa at the UFS, will be one of three UFS keynote speakers at the 10th International Congress on Calvin Research.
Photo: Provided


Three scholars from the University of the Free State (UFS) were invited to participate as keynote speakers at the 10th International Conference on Calvin Research that will be hosted by the UFS from 22-27 August 2010. 

“Hosting this conference is seen as an exceptional achievement since the conference represents an international, high-profiled and specialised research community where invitation to present research results is based on proven academic outputs, innovation and original research,” said Prof. Dolf Britz, Director: Jonathan Edwards Center Africa at the UFS. Prof. Britz will, as keynote speaker, present a paper on Calvin's exposition of a Biblical text that played a significant role in the ‘Freedom Struggle’ in South Africa.

The programme for the Conference on Calvin Research also provides for two workshops specially designed for postgraduate students. This will be facilitated by international scholars and the focus will be on research methodology and the academic competencies to write a dissertation.

A student from the UFS, Rev. Ntabanyane Tseuao, was selected to present a short paper at the conference. He is one of three postgraduate students who are from the Theological University Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and the University of Tübingen in Germany, respectively.

Prof. Erik de Boer, an Extraordinary Professor and Research Fellow at the UFS and Mr Eric Kayayan, a Research Fellow at the UFS, will also be keynote speakers at the conference.

Two other academics from the UFS, Prof. Adriaan Neele, an Extraordinary Professor and Research Fellow and Dr Victor d’Assonville, a Research Fellow, will also present papers.

The participation of these academics in the conference is the result of an initiative that started eight years ago to cluster South African research on Classical and Reformation Theology at the University of the Free State. - Leonie Bolleurs

 

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