Our Experts

Aziz is a primary care academic and epidemiologist with substantial research interests in asthma/allergy and in leveraging the potential of health information technology and data science to transform the delivery of care and improve population health.

Aziz is Director of the Usher Institute and Dean of Data at the University of Edinburgh. He is also Director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR), Director of the Scottish Allergy and Respiratory Academy (SARA), Director of the NIHR Global Respiratory Health Unit (RESPIRE) and is Co-Director of the NHS Digital Academy.

Currently Aziz holds a number of visiting chairs, namely: University of Birmingham (UK), Queen Mary’s University of London (UK) and Maastricht University (Netherlands). He was previously Visiting Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

He is an editorial board member of BMC Medicine, Health Informatics Journal, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Medical Care and PLOS Medicine, and is Editor-in-Chief of npj: Primary Care Respiratory Medicine.

Jennifer Quint is a Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute and Honorary Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine at the Royal Brompton and Imperial College London NHS Foundation Trusts.

Professor Quint’s research interests centre on the use of electronic health records to study chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as well as other chronic respiratory diseases including bronchiectasis and asthma. The majority of her work has been on exacerbations of COPD, exploring both the effect of COPD exacerbations on vascular outcomes and the relationship between environmental factors and exacerbations of COPD.

Additionally, she has undertaken several pieces of work in validation of identification of respiratory diseases in electronic health records.

Alex was 31 when he was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening rare disease, and witnessed first-hand how health data was used to understand his condition. Despite receiving good care, his lifestyle changed substantially, giving up many hobbies and activities due to fatigue, breathlessness and risk of sudden death.

He is a Participant Panel member at Genomics England which represents participants in the 100,000GenomesProject, and latterly the NHS Genomic Medicine Service (GMS). Alex joined the BREATHE Hub at HDR UK representing patient and public interest at the interface of health research, clinical healthcare and commercial applications. He has particular interest in ethical use of data in research and development for public benefit.

He has a professional background in Physics and energy materials research, science / maths outreach, and healthcare data analysis. He has worked for NIHR, in General Practice and is currently an analyst in the NHS.

Antony is someone who has lived with pain for over 29 yrs. During this time he lost everything, his home, his job, his relationship fell apart and he found that he had lost his purpose in life. After a number of years and with support, Antony has returned to the workplace and now holds several roles where he supports patients who live with pain and acts as an ambassador for patient and public involvement. He has also been the co-author on several publications where he ensures the patient/public voice is key.

Antony is currently a Trustee and Chair of Pain UK, an alliance of 30+ charities providing a voice and support for people who live with chronic pain.

He was also the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Patient Partnership Group, where he ensured that the patient was at the centre of all the College’s activity, and was also the lead author on ‘It’s your practice’ a guide to general practice for patients. In 2013 he was awarded the College’s highest award of ‘Honorary Fellowship’. Antony has also published several editorials in the College journal ‘The British Journal of General Practice’.

With substantial experience in the field of respiratory health, Monica Fletcher works across BREATHE’s partnerships.

Monica is involved in several national and global projects in the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh, covering respiratory health, primary care and ehealth innovation. She has been involved in influencing national and international policies through her extensive activities including membership of the WHO’s Global Alliance Against Respiratory Disease, the European Respiratory Society, the American Thoracic Society, the European COPD Coalition, and the International Primary Care Respiratory Group. She is a former Chair of the European Lung Foundation (2010-2014).

Her clinical interests are asthma and COPD and how data and technology can be used to improve health care systems and patient outcomes. She believes that working in partnership with patients and enabling them to take greater control of their condition is key to improved outcomes. Monica is honoured with an OBE for services to nursing and holds Fellowships of the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) and of the European Respiratory Society.

Professor David Ford is Professor of Informatics at Swansea University and Director of Population Data Science based in Swansea University Medical School. David is Director of the Administrative Data Research Centre(ADRC) Wales (ESRC) and Director of the HDRUK Wales and Northern Ireland site.

He also is Director of the Secure Anonymous Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank, which provides data linkage, curation and remote access services for the country of Wales and a wide range of programmes across the UK and internationally. With his colleague Professor Simon Thompson he is responsible for Swansea’s Secure e-Research Platform, used by many organisations in the UK and abroad to securely manage and share valuable sensitive research data.

He leads UK Multiple Sclerosis Register, is joint PI of the Family Justice Data Partnership (funded by Nuffield Foundation); and is co-investigator on a wide range of other studies and data-intensive initiatives. David sits on multiple advisory boards, steering groups and panels for UKRI, research charities, public bodies and international organisations. He has won grants of over £100million over past years. David is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA) and past Chairman and a current Director of MediWales, a membership organisation representing the medical technology sector of Wales. David was recently selected as one of the top 100 people in Data 2021 by DataIQ.

Professor Ian Hall is the Boots’ Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Nottingham and Director of the NIHR-Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre. His main clinical interest is in respiratory medicine.

He completed his clinical studies at the University of Oxford before moving to Nottingham in 1986. From 2009-2015 he was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Projects in his laboratory focus upon genetic approaches to the study of airway diseases with a special emphasis on asthma and COPD.

He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and he currently holds an NIHR Senior Investigator award. He has a long standing interest in the use of health data to inform both basic science and clinical studies in respiratory medicine.

Chris Griffiths is Professor of Primary Care at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry Queen Mary University of London.

He is Co-Director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research, Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, Principal Investigator at the MRC-Asthma UK Centre for Allergic Mechanisms in Asthma, Population Health Lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North Thames, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Chris leads research programmes addressing air pollution and health effects, asthma and respiratory disease, infectious disease including tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis, vitamin D biology and domestic violence.
 

Professor John Norrie is the Chair of Medical Statistics and Trials Methodology and Director of Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Edinburgh.

John is an experienced clinical trialist and medical statistician, involved in the design, conduct and analysis and reporting of randomised controlled trials, for all of drugs, devices, and complex interventions, both publicly and commercially funded, and across many clinical areas, including cardiology, obstetrics, surgery, and mental health. John has a longstanding involvement in the design and conduct of data-enabled clinical trials. John is currently Chair of the NIHR/MRC Efficacy and Mechanisms Evaluation (EME) Funding Committee, and was an elected Fellow of the Society of Clinical Trials, and of the Faculty of Public Health.

Martin is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Leicester, and Chair of the Leicester Precision Medicine Institute. He leads a programme of research on the genomics of common, complex diseases and traits, including lung health, COPD, and a wide variety of other traits and disease.

He has established and led research consortia, including UK BiLEVE, the first genetic study in UK Biobank and the Quantitative Methods, Machine Learning and Functional Genomics Clinical Interpretation Partnership. He continues to lead a successful cohort study, EXCEED, and the SpiroMeta consortium focused on the genetics of lung function and COPD. He is the Chief Scientific Officer for BREATHE, the national HDR UK Digital Innovation Hub for respiratory disease.

Key interests including early career research training, mentorship, public engagement and supporting genomics-driven precision medicine in non-European ancestries. He is Director of the 4-year PhD Programmein Genomic Epidemiology and Public Health Genomics funded by the Wellcome Trust. Martin has contributed to key funding panels, most recently the Wellcome Trust Science Interview Panel and the MRC Non-Clinical Careers Panel, and advisory panels, chairing the Governance Committee of the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training in Genomics Data Science.