Directory

Duke-NUS Medical School
Directory

Seyed Ehsan Saffari

Assistant Professor

Contact: 65161963

Bio Research Publications

Dr Saffari is an Assistant Professor at the Signature Program in Health Services & Systems Research (HSSR) and Centre for Quantitative Medicine (CQM) at Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore. He is also affiliated with National Neuroscience Institute as Visiting Scientist where he is collaborating in many exciting projects. He leads the AI + Neurology section of the Duke-NUS AI + Medical Sciences Initiative (DAISI).

He received his BS and MS from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. Although he bagged the first Rank in PhD entrance exam in Statistics among all MS graduates of Statistics in Iran, he went to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia where he got his PhD in statistics. He has two post-doctoral fellowship (from Sweden and Singapore), and over a decade of successful research and teaching experience. Over the past few years, he has been involved in many grants as co-investigator, collaborator and biostatistician, and has served as quantitative mentor for medical students of Duke-NUS Medical School. His main research interests are in electronic health record (from emergency department), neurology/neuroscience, machine learning and developing risk prediction models.

Visit his website at https://blog.nus.edu.sg/ehsansaffari/.

Research Interest

Electronic health record (EHR) data, neurology/neuroscience, machine learning and data science, risk prediction models

He is closely working with the Signature Program in Health Services & Systems Research (HSSR) at Duke-NUS and Emergency Department at SGH, where he has the opportunity to work on EHR data. Ehsan is also a visiting scientist at National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) where he is involved in many projects in the area of Parkinson, Dementia, Movement Disorders, Epilepsy, Alzheimer and Cognitive outcomes.

As a part of Ehsan’s international collaborations, he has been actively leading joint projects with New York University (USA), Brock University (Canada), University of Malaya (Malaysia), University of São Paulo (Brazil), Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (Iran) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (Malaysia). Over the years, he has served as a reviewer for several research funding agencies, including the National Medical Research Council (NMRC), and as a reviewer/editorial board of scientific journals. Ehsan has 80+ scientific publications (including 20+ first/corresponding/last author) and 20+ presentations in national/international seminar/conferences.

Here is the link to his Google Scholar citation page.

Feel free to check out Dr Saffari’s lab members at: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/ehsansaffari/members/

Selected publications:

Independent research (selected):

Saffari SE, Soo SA, Mohammadi R, Ng KP, Greene W, Kandiah N. Modelling the Distribution of Cognitive Outcomes for Early Stage Neurocognitive Disorders: A Model Comparison Approach. Biomedicines; 2024, 12(2), 393; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines12020393 (IF=4.9)

Saffari SE, Volovici V, Ong MEH, Goldstein BA, Vaughan R, Dammers R, Steyerberg EW, Liu N. Proper Use of Multiple Imputation and Dealing with Missing Covariate Data. World Neurosurgery; 2022: 161, 284-290. doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2021.10.090 (IF=2.2)

Saffari SE, Ning Y, Feng X, Chakraborty B, Volovici V, Vaughan R, Ong MEH, Liu N. AutoScore-Ordinal: An interpretable machine learning framework for generating scoring models for ordinal outcomes. BMC Medical Research Methodology. 2022; 22, 286. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-022-01770-y. (IF=7)

Yuan H, Xie F, Ong MEH, Ning Y, Chee ML, Saffari SE, Abdullah HR, Goldstein BA, Chakraborty B, Liu N. AutoScore-Imbalance: An Interpretable Machine Learning Tool for Development of Clinical Scores with Rare Events Data. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 2022; 129: 104072. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2022.104072 (IF=4.5)

Orooji A, Sahranavard T, Shakeri M-T, Tajfard M, Saffari SE. Application of the Truncated Zero-Inflated Double Poisson for Determining of the Effecting Factors on the Number of Coronary Artery Stenosis. Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine. 2022; 2022:5353539. (IF=2.8)

Saffari SE, Allen JC. Bivariate Negative Binomial Regression Model with Excess Zeros and Right Censoring: An Application to Indonesian Data. Journal of Applied Statistics, 2019; 47(10):10.1080/02664763.2019.1695761. (IF=1.4)

Saffari SE, Allen JC, Adnan R, Ong SH, Sim SZ, Greene W. Frequency of Visiting a Doctor: A right Truncated Count Regression Model with Excess Zeros. Biostatistics and Biometrics Open Access Journal, 2019; 9(5):555773. DOI: 10.19080/BBOAJ.2019.09.555773 (IF=2.0)

Saffari SE, Adnan R, Hashemi Fard M, Marchi VAA, Louzada F, Allen JC, Hashemi Fard A, Greene W. Modeling doctor visits using a right-censored zero-inflated Conway–Maxwell Poisson regression. Communications in Statistics: Case Studies, Data Analysis and Applications, 2018; 4(2): 96-107. (CiteScore=0.6)

Bazzazzadeh V, Doosti H, Boskabadi H, Saffari SE, Peyman N, Chesneau Ch. Modeling the Infant’s Age at Hospital Admission in Neonatal with Jaundice at the Ghaem Mashhad Hospital Using Count Models with Excess Zeros. Biostatistics and Biometrics Open Access Journal, 2017; 3(4): 555-620. (IF=2.0)

Saffari SE, Löve A, Fredrikson M, Smedby Ö. Regression models for analyzing radiological visual grading studies - an empirical comparison. BMC Medical Imaging, 2015; 15(1): 1-10. (IF=2.8)

Saffari SE, Robiah A, Greene W. Hurdle negative binomial regression model with right censored count data. Journal of Statistics and Operations Research Transactions, 2012; 36(2): 181-194. (IF=1.8)

Saffari SE, Robiah A, Greene W. Investigating the impact of excess zeros on hurdle generalized Poisson regression model with right censored count data. Journal of Statistica Neerlandica, 2012; 67(1): 67-80. (IF=1.2)

Neurology/Neuroscience (selected):

Sia MW, Foo JN, Saffari SE, Wong ASY, Khor CC, Yuan JM, Tan EK, Koh WP and Tan LCS. Polygenic Risk Scores in a Prospective Parkinson's Disease Cohort. Mov Disord, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28761 (IF=8.6)

Siow I, Lee KS, Zhang JJY, Saffari SE, Ng A. Encephalitis as a neurological complication of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis of incidence, outcomes, and predictors. Eur J Neurol, 2021; 00: 1– 12. https://doi.org/10.1111/ene.14913 (IF=5.1)

Soo SA, Ng KP, Wong F, Saffari SE, Yatawara C, Ismail Z, Kandiah N. The Association Between Diabetes Mellitus and Mild Behavioral Impairment Among Mild Cognitive Impairment: Findings from Singapore. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2021; 82(1): 1-10. (IF=14)

Guevarra AC, NG SC, Saffari SE, et al. Age Moderates Associations of Hypertension, White Matter Hyperintensities, and Cognition. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2020; 75(4):1351-1360. (IF=14)

Ng SYE, Chia NSY, Abbas MM, Saffari SE, et al. Physical Activity Improves Anxiety and Apathy in Early Parkinson's Disease: A Longitudinal Follow-Up Study. Frontiers in Neurology, 2021; 11:1908. (IF=3.4)

Chua CY, Koh MRE, Chia NSY, Ng SYE, Saffari SE, et al. Subjective cognitive Complaints in early Parkinson's disease patients with normal cognition are associated with affective symptoms. Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 2021; 82, doi.org/10.1016/j.parkreldis.2020.11.013. (IF=4.1)

Xu Z, Anderson KN, Saffari, SE et al. Progression of sleep disturbances in Parkinson’s disease: a 5-year longitudinal study. J Neurol, 2021; 268: 312–320 (IF=6.0)

Ng ASL, Tan YJ, Yong ACW, Saffari SE, et al. Utility of plasma Neurofilament light as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of the postural instability gait disorder motor subtype in early Parkinson’s disease. Molecular Neurodegeneration, 2020; 15(1):1-8 (IF=15.8)

Gosavi T, Koh J, Rosman M, Prasad K, Doshi K, Lim ES, Saffari SE, et al. Psychological impact of isolation due to COVID-19 among young and fit dormitory residents. Psychological Medicine, 2020; 1-2. doi:10.1017/S0033291720004274 (IF=7.6)

Ng ASL, Tan YJ, Zhao Y, Saffari SE, et al. SNCA Rep1 promoter variability influences cognition in Parkinson's disease. Movement Disorders. 2019; 34(8):1232-1236 (IF=8.6)

Emergency Department (Selected):

Liu N, Ning Y, Ong MEH, Saffari SE, et al. Gender disparities among adult recipients of layperson bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation by location of cardiac arrest in Pan-Asian communities: A registry-based study. eClinicalMedicine. 2022; 44:101293. (IF=15.1)

Liu N, Liu M, Chen X, Ning Y, Lee JW, Siddiqui FJ, Saffari SE, et al. Development and validation of an interpretable prehospital return of spontaneous circulation (P-ROSC) score for patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest using machine learning: A retrospective study. eClinicalMedicine; 2022: 48, 101422. doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101422 (IF=15.1)

Ho AFW, Ho JSY, Tan BY-Q, Saffari SE, et al. Air quality and the risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Singapore (PAROS): a time series analysis. The Lancet Public Health. 2022;7(11):e932-e941. (IF=50)

Lim SL, Kumar L, Saffari SE, Shahidah N, Al-Araji R, Ng QX, Ho AFW, Arulanandam S, Leong BS-H, Liu N, Siddiqui FJ, McNally B, Ong MEH. Management of Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest during COVID-19: A Tale of Two Cities. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2022; 11(17):5177. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11175177 (IF=3.9)

Lim SL, Shahidah N, Saffari SE, Ng QX, Ho AFW, Leong BS-H, Arulanandam S, Siddiqui FJ, Ong MEH. Impact of COVID-19 on Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in Singapore. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(7):3646. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073646 (CS=5.4)