Evidence 2011 Speakers

Jon specialises in understanding and meeting the information needs of clinicians. He works extensively in the world of clinical question answering and has run numerous services. He and his various teams have answered over 10,000 clinical questions. As a result of his work he created and still runs the clinical search engine the TRIP Database (www.tripdatabase.com). The TRIP Database has been running for over ten years and is used worldwide. In 2010 it surpassed 50 million searches since its launch. As well as working on the TRIP Database he works for Public Health Wales also involved in clinical knowledge support.

His main current areas of interest include the limitations of search, the personalisation of information (including for the developing world), the use of social media (twitter, blogs) and meeting unknown information needs.

Dr. Tammy Clifford is the Chief Scientist at the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). Her current responsibilities include accountability for the overall quality of CADTH’s work, ensuring alignment with international best practices in HTA methodology, and increasing HTA capacity via education, training and outreach.   She joined CADTH in 2005, and continues to hold faculty appointments in Pediatrics and in Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa.

Dr Clifford received her PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Western Ontario and both her BSc and MSc(A) from McGill University. Her particular fields of interest relate to the methodological underpinnings of health technology assessments and rapid reviews as well as issues related to updating   and the editorial peer review process. Dr. Clifford is actively involved with a number of organizations, including the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA), and Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi).

Sally has a nursing and public health background. As director of Crowe Associates Ltd, which provides consultancy, training and project management for patient and public involvement in health, she regularly facilitates workshops and consultation events in health and social care research, and services development. Teaching critical appraisal and understanding evidence skills continues to be a passion. She has recently published a BMJ Wiley Blackwell Patient and Public Involvement Toolkit.

She chairs the James Lind Alliance Monitoring and Implementation Group (www.lindalliance.org), a national coalition that aims to tackle treatment uncertainties in health care. This is primarily achieved through partnerships of patient and clinician groups, and Sally is currently working with partnerships for eczema, type 1 diabetes, pressure ulcers and pre term birth. The James Lind Alliance is funded by the Department of Health and the Medical Research Council.

Professor Ernst qualified as a physician in Munich, Germany in 1976. In 1978 he completed his MD thesis and in 1985 his PhD. He was appointed Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School (Germany) in 1989. Eighteen months later he accepted the post of Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna (Austria). He came to the University of Exeter (UK) Postgraduate Medical School in October 1993, establishing the worldwide first Chair in Complementary Medicine. In 1996 he founded the Department of Complementary Medicine at this University’s Postgraduate Medical School and in 2002 his unit became part of the new Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth.

Professor Ernst has ‘hands on’ experience of a range of complementary therapies, including herbal medicine, homoeopathy, massage therapy, spinal manipulation, acupuncture and autogenic training. He has contributed extensively to medical literature in several areas: Haemorheology, Angiology, PMR and Complementary/Alternative Medicine (CAM). In total he has published more than 1000 papers (>600 in CAM) in the peer -reviewed medical literature, about 500 primary research contributions and over 40 books (translated into well over a dozen languages). He is founder/ Editor-in-Chief of two medical journals (FACT [‘Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies’] and ‘Perfusion’) and is on the editorial board of more than 20 medical journals. He is a regular reviewer for many publications including the Lancet, BMJ, JAMA and the Archives of Internal Medicine.

His work has been awarded with 13 scientific prizes/awards and he was a Visiting Professor at Roy Coll Surgeons, Canada (1999) and at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (2005). He served as an external examiner for the Universities of Berlin, Bombay, Derby, Dublin, Hannover, London, Manchester Metropolitan, Munich, Oxford, Sydney, Ulster, Zürich and others. He has supervised ~50 MD or PhD theses and given about four hundred invited international lectures. He served on the ‘Medicines Commission’ of the British ‘Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’ (1994 – 2005) and on the ‘Scientific Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products’ of the ‘Irish Medicines Board’. He is patron of two British CAM organisations and honorary member of several dozen others. He has served as an expert witness to the UK High Court and the British General Medical Council.

In 1999 he took British nationality. In 2000 he was granted an entry in the “Who’s Who”. He writes or wrote regular columns for ‘The Guardian’ (2003-5), The Chemist Druggist, The Pharmaceutical Journal, Independent Nurse Magazine, Münch Wed Wschr and Stern (Gesund Leben), SonntagZeitung (Switzerland) and has his own blog (www.pulsetoday.co.uk/rss.asp?navcode=969).

Mark Gibson is the Director of the Center for Evidence-based Policy at the Oregon Health and Science University, and a program officer for the Milbank Memorial Fund. In these roles he works extensively with state policy makers to identify and obtain research evidence needed to inform their policy deliberations. Gibson has played a key role in developing two multi-state collaborations, the Drug Effectiveness Review Project (DERP) and the Medicaid Evidence-based Decisions (MED) project.

Mr. Gibson served as Chief of Staff to Oregon Senate President John Kitzhaber M.D from 1985-1993. In this role, Gibson participated directly in the drafting and passage of the groundbreaking Oregon Health Plan.

From 1995 through January of 2003, he served as Policy Advisor for Health, Human Services, and Labor to Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon. He led Oregon’s numerous health initiatives from Workers’ Compensation Reform, to creation of the Oregon Children’s Health Insurance Program and an expansion of the Oregon Health Plan. Gibson led the effort to enact Oregon’s answer to runaway drug costs in its Medicaid program. This approach uses systematic reviews of global drug effectiveness research to guide the creation of a preferred drug list that is both clinically sound and economical.

Phil Hammond is a GP, writer, broadcaster and possibly the only comedian to appear at a public inquiry. He is Private Eye’s medical correspondent and broke the story of the Bristol heart scandal in 1992, which lead to the largest public inquiry in British history 7 years later. In 2009, he broke allegations of serious errors in pathology reporting in Bristol, which lead to an inquiry in just 7 days. He has survived Ruby Wax, Have I Got News For You (7 times), The News Quiz, The Now Show, and being reported to the General Medical Council by William Hague’s Press Secretary. He was also the only doctor to appear for the prosecution on Channel 4’s Doctors on Trial.

Brought up in Australia before moving to Marlborough, Hammond qualified as a doctor in 1987 from Girton College, Cambridge University and St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. He became a GP in 1991 but first came into the public spotlight writing a column for The Independent and as half of Struck Off and Die, with Tony Gardner. They had five sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, were twice selected for the Perrier Pick of the Fringe and won Writers’ Guild and Silver Sony Awards when the show transformed into a Radio 4 series. In 2002, Phil fronted 28 Minutes to Save the NHS on Radio 4, which he extended to a sell out Edinburgh Fringe Show, 59 Minutes to Save the NHS and further extended to a highly successful 60-date UK tour 89 Minutes to Save the NHS.

Hammond still works part time as a GP and lecturer, but is better known for his TV work. He presented five series of Trust Me, I’m a Doctor on BBC 2, exposing wide variations in care across the NHS and co-wrote the sitcom, Doctors and Nurses, broadcast on BBC 1 in 2004. A GP-based sitcom, Polyoaks, has just been commissioned by Radio 4. He presents The Music Group for Radio 4 and is the author of three best-selling books: Medicine Balls (an NHS satire), Trust Me I’m Still a Doctor (20 years of whistle-blowing in Private Eye) and his latest book, a pleasure manual entitled Sex, Sleep or Scrabble? is based his experiences working in Sexual health. This is also the inspiration behind his latest live show Dr. Phil’s Rude Health Show, which goes on tour from April 2010. A DVD of Dr Phil’s Rude Health Show will also be released in 2010.

Professor Mike Kelly is Director of the Centre of Public Health Excellence at NICE where he leads on the development of public health guidance. He is a public health practitioner, researcher and academic. He originally graduated in Social Science from the University of York, holds a Masters degree in Sociology from the University of Leicester, and undertook his PhD in the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Dundee. Before joining NICE he was Director of Evidence and Guidance at the Health Development Agency. Professor Kelly has previously held academic posts at the Universities of Leicester, Dundee, Glasgow, Greenwich and Abertay. He is now Honorary Professor in the Department of Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Honorary Professor in Community Based Medicine, in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, the University of Manchester, Visiting Professor in the School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Honorary Professor of Public Health, University of Salford, an Associate in the Behaviour and Health Policy Research Unit, Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge and Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Public Health, Primary Care and Food Policy in the School of Community and Health Sciences, City University, London. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Professor Kelly is a medical sociologist with research interests in evidence based approaches to health improvement, methodological problems in public health research, evidence synthesis, coronary heart disease prevention, chronic illness, disability, physical activity, health inequalities, social identity and community involvement in health promotion. From 2005-8 he was the co leader of the Measurement and Evidence Knowledge Network of World Health Organisation’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. He has published more than two hundred papers in medical, social scientific and public health journals and is author/ editor of seven books. In 2010 he was awarded the Alwyn Smith Prize of the Faculty of Public Health for his work on cardiovascular disease and alcohol misuse prevention.

Steven is trained as a General Practitioner and Public Health Consultant and currently works as a GP in a large practice in Hertfordshire and also an Associate Medical Director for NHS East of England.

Steven has recently been appointed as the National Clinical Lead for Shared Decision Making as part of the National Right Care QIPP workstream (Right Care for Patients).
He co-chairs the Long Term Conditions Clinical Programme Board in NHS East of England. He is also a National Clinical Advisor to the Department of Health (Elective Care and Diagnostics).

He also works as a freelance health care consultant, especially in relation to pathway redesign and commissioning.

Steven has commissioned a web solution (Pathways for Health) for the development of local commissioning care pathways, based upon the template he, and a colleague, developed for the DH 18 Week Team. Pathways for Health has been used for the development of 50 pathways for the 18 Week Programme, as well as many other national, regional and local pathways for a range of health and patient charitable organisations.

Steven qualified from the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in 1991 and trained initially in hospital medicine, gaining his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians. He then went on to train in general practice in Hertfordshire and subsequently specialist public health training in London and Hertfordshire, gaining a Masters in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and completing his public health specialist training.

Steven’s particular medical interests include care pathways, demand management, long term conditions, patient empowerment, patient leadership and Shared Decision Making.

He lives with his wife and three young children in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Trained in Emergency Medicine in the North West and appointed Consultant at MRI and FCEM in 1993. Kevin has Published widely on the practice of Emergency Medicine, both books (Advanced Paediatric Life Support, Major Incident Medical Management and Support, Emergency Triage) and academic papers. As well as consulting at MRI and Booth Hall is also Executive Medical Director of the North West Ambulance Service, Civilian Consultant Advisor to the British Army and Head of the North Western School of Emergency Medicine.

Kevin is the founder of Best Bets developed by the Emergency Department at Manchester Royal Infirmary. They arose out of a desire to provide brief reviews of the best evidence about specific topics, in a way that met the specific needs of Emergency Medicine. The CATs used by Sackett were seen as a starting point for developing a method of EBM topic review tailored for Emergency Medicine. BETs have been used as a central part of the department's critical appraisal journal club, for staff and students, and have formed a focus point for an intensive training in critical appraisal for medical students.

Dr Yannis Pitsiladis is a Reader in Exercise Physiology at the Institute of Cardiovascular & Medical Sciences in the College of Medicine, Veterinary & Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow and founding member of the “International Centre for East African Running Science” (ICEARS) set up to investigate the determinants of the phenomenal success of east African distance runners in international athletics. Recent projects also include the study of elite sprinters from Jamaica and the USA and the study of world class swimmers (e.g., why are there very few black swimmers?). He is a Visiting Professor in Medical Physiology at Moi University (Eldoret, Kenya) and Addis Ababa University (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). He is a member of the Scientific Commission of the International Sports Medicine Federation (FIMS) and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) List Expert Group; the WADA Group in charge of establishing the Prohibited List annually. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

Dr Kristina Staley is a Co-Director of TwoCan Associates, (www.twocanassociates.co.uk) a small company which specialises in researching, promoting and supporting patient and public involvement in health and social care.

After gaining her PhD from Cambridge University, and working as a post-doctoral fellow in the USA, she moved into health and science policy working at the King's Fund and Sussex University's Science Policy Research Unit. For many years her work focused on involving the public in research and development in order to inform policy and practice in health and social care. She is the author of INVOLVE’s recent report Exploring Impact: Public Involvement in NHS, public health and social care research.

Professor Tarassenko has been the holder of the Chair in Electrical Engineering at Oxford University since October 1997. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in 1996, when he was also awarded the IEE Mather Premium for his work on neural networks, and to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2000. He received a British Computer Society Medal in 1996 for his work on neural network analysis of sleep disorders. His work on mobile phones for healthcare was awarded the E-health 2005 Innovation Award for "best device to empower patients". He was awarded the 2006 Silver Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering and he also won the Institute of Engineering & Technology IT Award for "Data Fusion Software for Early Detection of Patient Deterioration", also in 2006.

Professor Tarassenko is the author of 140 refereed publications, 150 conference papers, 3 books and 24 patents. He was a founder director of Oxford BioSignals Ltd in May 2000 and a founder director of e-San Ltd (now t+ Medical) in February 2002. He is a member of the Wellcome Trust Technology Transfer Strategy Panel. He is the Bioengineering theme leader for the joint NHS/University Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (2007-2012), the Director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering since October 2008, and the Director of the Centre of Excellence in Medical Engineering jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC since October 2009.