Caroline Lamb

Caroline was appointed as DG Health and Social Care and Chief Executive of NHS Scotland in January 2021.

Caroline joined the Scottish Government in December 2019 to lead the Digital Health and Care Directorate.  With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, Caroline took on a number of different roles.  In March 2020, she led on our ICU surge requirements; and from May 2020 she became Portfolio Director for Test and Protect, working with colleagues from across the system to establish our arrangements for contact tracing, and providing support for isolation.  In August 2020 she became Delivery Director for the Extended Seasonal Flu and Covid-19 vaccination programmes. 

Caroline trained as a Chartered Accountant in London.  After qualifying she came to Scotland and worked first in housing and then in higher education. Caroline joined the NHS in 2004, as Director of Finance and Corporate Resources for NHS Education for Scotland (NES).  NES is one of the national NHS Boards with responsibility for training, education and workforce development.  Caroline led the Digital Transformation at NES, and was appointed as Chief Executive in 2015.  In 2017 she was appointed by Scottish Government to represent National Boards as National Implementation Lead for the Health & Social Care Delivery Plan.  In this role she worked closely with Scottish Government and the 3 Regional Implementation Leads

Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak

Professor Dominiczak is a world-leading cardiovascular scientist and clinical academic. She has published extensively in top peer-reviewed journals (over 500 publications, an h-index of 118). Between 2010 and 2020 she was Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Anna developed new clinical academic campus at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, where she led a triple helix partnership between academia, the NHS and industry to accelerate innovation, maximize patient benefits and economic growth. 

Dame Anna is a member of several editorial boards and, from 2012 - 2022, was Editor-in-Chief of Hypertension, journal of the American Heart Association, currently she is Editor-in Chief of Precision Medicine, a new Prism journal of the Cambridge Press.

In March 2020, Anna led the establishment of Lighthouse Laboratory in Glasgow to provide rapid Covid–19 diagnostics, and then was asked to become Director of Laboratories at the UK Department of Health and Social Care to lead all 10 Lighthouse Laboratories across the UK, the role she fulfilled until 2022.

In July 2022 she was appointed as a Chief Scientist for health for the Scottish Government as a secondment from the University.

Professor David Crossman

Professor David Crossman is Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Head of the School of Medicine at the University of St Andrews.  He moved to Scotland over nine years ago having run the medical school at the University of East Anglia. Prior to that he was Professor of Clinical Cardiology at the University of Sheffield, a post that he took up in 1994.

He has practiced as a regional centre cardiologist with an interest in interventional cardiology and heart disease in pregnancy. He continues to hold an honorary consultant cardiologist at NHS Fife. His research interest is in the inflammatory basis of coronary artery disease and clinical trials.

From 2017 to 2022, he held the seconded post of Chief Scientist for Health to the Scottish Government, advising on health matters and clinical research funded by the Scottish Government with an emphasis on the Covid-19 Pandemic through the Chief Scientists Office.  During the pandemic, he served as Vice-Chairman of the Scottish Government Covid-19 advisory group and as Chair of the Scottish Government COVID-19 Test Strategy Group.

Professor Crossman was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to public health in Scotland.

Professor Andrew Morris

Professor Andrew Morris became the inaugural Director of Health Data Research UK in August 2017. He is seconded from his position as Professor of Medicine, and Vice Principal of Data Science at the University of Edinburgh, having taken up position in August 2014. Prior to this Andrew was Dean of Medicine at the University of Dundee. 

Andrew was Chief Scientist at the Scottish Government Health Directorate (2012-2017) and has served and chaired numerous national and international grant committees and Governmental bodies and currently chairs the Scottish Committee on Pandemic Preparedness. 

His research interests span informatics and chronic diseases. He has published over 330 original papers, attracted over £50 million in grant funding and was the principal investigator of several programme grants including the Wellcome Trust United Kingdom Case Control Collection for Type 2 Diabetes, Generation Scotland, a study of the genetic health in 50,000 Scots, the Wellcome Trust funded Scottish Health Informatics Programme (SHIP), and the Farr Institute in Scotland. 

In 2007 he co-founded Aridhia Informatics, which uses high performance computing and analytics in health care. 

Andrew was previously Governor of the Health Foundation (2009-2017), a leading UK charity that supports quality improvement in health care, and chaired the Informatics Board at UCLPartners, London (2014-2017). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Medical Sciences. 

Andrew was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2018.

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh is Chair of Primary Care Research and Development, Director of the Usher Institute and Dean of Data at the University of Edinburgh. He is also Director of the 17 university Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR) and co-leads Health Data Research UK’s national Driver Programme on Inflammation and Immunity. 

He was previously a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice and 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 the International Journal of Quality in Health Care. He has played important advisory roles to a number of governments, inter-governmental bodies including the World Bank, World Health Organization and the World Innovation Summit for Health, and leading scientific bodies including the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.

He is a fellow of nine learned societies and has been awarded numerous UK and international awards for his work.

Aziz was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for ‘Services to Medicine and Health Care’ in 2014 and a Knight Bachelor in 2022 for ‘Services to COVID-19 Research and Policy’.

Professor Heather Whalley

Professor Heather Whalley is Professor of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Edinburgh. Her work focusses on the major global health challenge of mental ill health, particularly during adolescence. Her research involves integrating approaches including neuroimaging, genomic, molecular and electronic/computational phenotyping, along with youth engagement, to improve our understanding and treatment of mental ill health. She previously held a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship and a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh JMAS SIM fellowship and is currently the Chief Scientist for Generation Scotland.

Dr Ken Sutherland

Dr Ken Sutherland is a leading engineering figure at the interface between medicine, engineering and the life sciences in Scotland and the UK. His influence in this sector has translated into global medical products that bring benefit to clinicians, patients, researchers and the medical industry. In his role as President of Canon Medical Europe he has secured £100 million of inward investment from Japan for UK R&D in the last 10 years. His current vision in precision medicine is driving several initiatives in artificial intelligence and data sciences in healthcare including the Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research in Digital Diagnostics (ICAIRD), a collaboration between companies, universities and the NHS.

James Blackwood

James Blackwood is currently the AI Strategy and Portfolio Lead for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.  

He previously held the role of CTO & NHS National Programme Manager for iCAIRD, one of the UK’s largest healthcare AI research programmes, based in Scotland, with over 50 projects across radiology and pathology AI.  JD was also the Healthcare AI Lead in Scottish Government.

JD is a generalist with a background in product and service innovation; digital customer experience design; cutting-edge technology architecture including artificial intelligence; large-scale international programme delivery; and starting, scaling and running technology companies.  He is passionate about using technology to improve lives.

Professor Iain McInnes

Iain McInnes is Head of College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences, and Vice Principal, University of Glasgow, and serves also as the Muirhead Professor of Medicine and Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology in the University. He is Director of the Versus Arthritis Centre of Excellence for Inflammatory Arthritis, lead from the University of Glasgow that includes Universities of Oxford, Newcastle and Birmingham. He serves as a member of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board.  He is a Trustee on the Board of Versus Arthritis. He is past chairman of the Foreum (Foundation for European Rheumatology Research) Scientific Committee, lead the European Roadmap programme that is defining the research agenda for European rheumatology for the next decade and is Past-President of the European Alliance of Rheumatology Asssociations (EULAR). Under these auspices he led the creation of the first pan-European Rheumatology Research Centre launched in 2021.  His work is mainly focused upon the understanding of the pathogenesis of immune mediated inflammatory diseases and encompasses basic discovery immunology through phase 1 and proof of concept experimental medicine clinical trials to leadership of pivotal phase 3 trials in the area of immune biology. His laboratory group performed original discovery work supporting the therapeutic targeting of a several inflammatory cytokines. More recently he has focused on the biology of myeloid cells in the pathogenesis of a number of immune diseases.  He has served on a number of scientific advisory groups adjacent to the pharmaceutical industry, mainly in the area of development of novel immune modifying agents. He has published >550 peer-reviewed original and review articles with an h-index of >130 equating to around 100,000 citations.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019 by HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Alison Culpan

Director, Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)

Alison has played a leading role within the Scottish life sciences sector, in particular the pharmaceutical sector, for over 20 years. She has served on the courts of 2 Scottish universities namely, Caledonian and Strathclyde, the CBI Scottish Council, and the Life Sciences Industry Leadership Group.  

She started her career with ICI working in commercial roles and in 1999, moved to GSK where she complimented her skill set taking on roles in Scottish affairs, communications, and global issues. Alison looks for avenues to use industry “know how’ and resources to create partnerships of mutual benefit to society and industry. Recognition of one of these partnerships resulted in the Private / Public Partnership Award from the Scottish Businesswomen’s Association.

A lifetime of experience touching most aspects of the pharmaceutical sector means she is well placed to represent the industry in Scotland through her current role as Director for the ABPI.

A keen golfer and tennis player results in her never achieving the peak of Maslow’s hierarchy, but her tenacity means she keeps trying!

Professor Tan Chorh Chuan

Professor Tan Chorh Chuan was appointed Permanent Secretary of National Research and Development, Permanent Secretary (Public Sector Science and Technology Policy and Plans Office), Prime Minister’s Office, and Chairman of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) on 1 Oct 2023. In addition, he will continue with his appointments as the Chairman of MOHT and the Chair of MOH’s Healthier SG Implementation Office. Prof Tan served as the inaugural Chief Health Scientist and Executive Director of the new Office for Healthcare Transformation in Singapore’s Ministry of Health from 1 January 2018 to 30 September 2023. He was President of the National University of Singapore from 2008 to 2017. He held the positions of NUS Provost, then Senior Deputy President from 2004 to 2008. He was former Dean of the NUS Faculty of Medicine and served as the Director of Medical Services, Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2004, in which capacity he was responsible for leading the public health response to the 2003 SARS epidemic. He was also the Chairman of the Board of the National University Health System from 2011-2018. Prof Tan is a key leader in Singapore's Biomedical Sciences Initiative since its inception in 2000, for which he was awarded the National Science and Technology Medal in 2008. He has also received the Public Service Star in 2003; the Public Administration Gold Medal in 2004; the Meritorious Service Medal in 2015; the Distinguished Service Order in 2022 and Public Service Star (COVID-19) in 2023. Prof Tan is the recipient of several international awards and is the first Singaporean to be elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Medicine. A renal physician, he obtained his medical training at NUS, and research training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.

Dr Victor Dzau

Victor J. Dzau is President of US National Academy of Medicine (NAM), Vice Chair of the National Research Council, Chancellor Emeritus of Duke University, and past CEO of Duke Health System. Previously, he was Professor and Chairman of Medicine at both Harvard and Stanford Universities. Dzau is recognized for a highly decorated career as a scientist, administrator, and leader. His seminal research in cardiovascular medicine laid the foundation for development of lifesaving drugs known as ACE inhibitors, used globally to treat high blood pressure and congestive heart failure. He pioneered gene therapy for vascular disease.

Dzau is a leader in global health innovation and policy and is widely credited for the concept of the “Discovery to care continuum: Creating an innovation eco-system.” He founded Duke Institute of Health Innovation, Duke Global Health Institute, and Duke NUS Graduate Medical School. He co-founded (with World Economic Forum and McKinsey) the nonprofit entity “Innovation in Healthcare” which supports scaling and replicating low cost healthcare innovations around the world.

Dzau launched the NAM’s program on emerging science and technology, which addresses societal implications of emerging technology and develop an equitable framework for governance. Internationally, he advises governments and multilaterals on innovation strategies. He chairs Health & Human Potential International Advisory Committee of Singapore, serves on Precision Medicine Scotland Expert Advisory Group and Steering Group for the Science & Innovation, serves on Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, co-chaired the G20 Scientific Panel on Global Health Security, is an advisor to the G7 Japan Health Task Force, and now co-chairs the Science and Technology Expert Panel for the 100 Day Mission.

Professor Sir Gregor Smith

Professor Sir Gregor Smith was appointed Chief Medical Officer for Scotland in December 2020, he is a GP and former medical director for primary care in NHS Lanarkshire. Prof. Smith was appointed Deputy Chief Medical Officer in 2015, interim Chief Medical Officer in April 2020, and Chief Medical Officer in December 2020. Now the principal medical adviser to Scottish ministers, Professor Sir Gregor Smith leads on a broad range of professional activity, where he is a passionate advocate of person-centred approaches to care and widening participation in medical careers.

As a keen cyclist and promoter of physical activity, he believes getting outdoors can help improve people’s physical, mental, and social health. He was bestowed a knighthood in the Queen’s New Year Honours list in 2022 for services to public health and is an Honorary Professor of the University of Glasgow.

Dr Alan McNair

Dr Alan McNair is Senior Research Manager within the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office. His remit covers CSO’s direct research funding, research infrastructure support and UK-wide collaborations. He has worked in research and latterly research management roles in a number of leading research institutions, including the Pasteur Institute, NUI Galway and the University of Lausanne.

Marian McNeil

Marian McNeil is the Chief Executive for Precision Medicine Scotland and has worked there for 3 years. She has a background in Management, Business Development and Professional Relations working in large pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca. She recently (2016) gained a Masters in Stratified Medicine and Pharmacological Innovation from the University of Glasgow. She has extensive experience of the medical marketing interface for oncology pipeline products and has been part of a large multi-disciplinary team focused on development through to successful launch of targeted treatments for cancer.

Dr Louise Campbell

Dr Louise Campbell is Research Manager within the Chief Scientist Office. She has a background in both health research as well as oceanography. Her current role within the CSO involves supporting high quality health research conducted in Scotland e.g. leading on the enhanced post award engagement programme for Precision Medicine Alliance Scotland (PMAS).

Professor Ewan Pearson

Ewan Pearson is Professor of Diabetic Medicine at the University of Dundee, Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, Guest Professor at University of Lund and Honorary Consultant in Diabetes and Endocrinology at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School in Dundee. He is an associate director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, where he leads the Diabetes Data Catalyst. Ewan has been awarded the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Croom Lecture, the Diabetes UK RD Lawrence Lecture and Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture, and the EASD Minkowski Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Ewan’s research interests have been in the phenotypic and genotypic determinants of drug response in diabetes, and in stratified approaches to the management of diabetes. Using the extensive prescribing and health record data linked to the GoDARTS bioresource his group have identified novel genetic variants associated with glycaemic response to metformin, sulphonylureas and GLP-1 Receptor Agonists. Ewan’s earlier work established that patients with monogenic diabetes did not need insulin treatment, paving the way for 1000s of patients to transition off long term insulin treatment onto oral medication. Ewan has recently been awarded £2.8M from the Chief Scientists Office to implement precision diabetes care within NHS Tayside.

Professor David Hunt

Professor David Hunt is a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow and Consultant Neurologist based at the University of Edinburgh. He leads the NHS Lothian Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology service. His research is focussed on discovery and development of precision biomarkers for brain disease, with the aim of improving outcomes for people with neurological disorders. His work involves ultrasensitive detection of brain proteins in blood using single molecule technologies, precision analytics of brain MRI data and development of digital technologies in the clinic.

Professor Stuart Forbes

Stuart Forbes is Director of the UKRMP Hub for the Engineered Cell Environment, the Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Institute for Regeneration and Repair at the University of Edinburgh, and a Hepatologist at the Scottish Liver Transplant Unit. He researches how the damaged liver regenerates and is developing cell therapies for liver disease. Stuart founded Resolution Therapeutics who are developing macrophage cell therapies to treat inflammatory organ disease.

Professor Nazir Lone

Professor Nazir Lone is Professor of Critical Care and Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, and Honorary Consultant, Critical Care, NHS Lothian. His programme of research focuses on health services research and health care quality improvement for acutely ill patients. His research aims to directly improve the quality of care for patients before, during and after an episode of acute or critical illness through rigorously conducted research and engagement with key stakeholders. Nazir’s has a particular research interest in epidemiological methods and using linked 'big' data, multimorbidity and end-of-life care in acute and critical care settings. Nazir’s current programme of work includes NIHR-funded work to apply artificial intelligence (AI) methods in the context of multimorbidity (AIM-CISC) in which he co-leads work to develop AI tools to reduce adverse events. He also leads Innovate UK funded work to improve multimorbidity recognition in emergency care settings using data analytics.

Professor Sandosh Padmanabhan

Professor Sandosh Padmanabhan is Professor of Cardiovascular Genomics and Therapeutics (Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health) at University of Glasgow. He completed his MBBS and MD at JIPMER, Pondicherry, India and was awarded the Gold Medal for MD General Medicine in 1995. His PhD (1999-2003) on G-protein signalling in hypertension was awarded the Bellahouston Medal by the University of Glasgow in 2004. He received the Austin Doyle Award from the International Society of Hypertension in 2004. His pharmacogenetic genome wide linkage study led to a BHF Intermediate Fellowship (2006-2009). He was the lead on a genome wide association analysis of Hypertension between 2008 and 2010 resulting in the discovery of a new gene and pathway for hypertension. He was a visiting fellow to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT (2010-2012). He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the British Hypertension Society and the American Heart Association.

Professor Rory McCrimmon

Professor Rory McCrimmon trained at the University of Edinburgh and completed his clinical and speciality training in the South-East of Scotland. In 2002, he joined the faculty at Yale University, USA, to investigate why people with type 1 are very prone to developing low glucose (Hypoglycaemia). He returned to Scotland in 2009 to establish his laboratory at the University of Dundee, where he is currently Dean of Medicine, Professor of Experimental Diabetes and Metabolism and Honorary Consultant. He was awarded the 2015 RD Lawrence Lecture and 2022 Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture by Diabetes UK for his research in Hypoglycaemia, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Rory has served on the Editorial Boards of Diabetologia, Diabetes, Diabetes Care and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. He has been a panel member for Medical Research Council Population and Systems Medicine Board, Diabetes UK Clinical Studies Group Management Committee; Diabetes UK, Intermediate Clinical Fellowships Panel; Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Scientific Review Boards PEAK Programme; he is an executive member of the International Hypoglycaemia Study Group and a non-executive member of the NHS Tayside Health Board. He is currently also Lead Clinician for the Scottish Diabetes Research Network (Diabetes | NHS Research Scotland | NHS Research Scotland) which supports the setup and delivery of clinical and epidemiological research across Scotland. Epidemiological research is carried out using SCI-Diabetes (Scottish Care Information - Diabetes), which tracks real-time clinical information on all 300,000 people with type I and type II Diabetes in Scotland. The Diabetes Research Register is directly linked to Sci-Diabetes and has over 16,000 patients who have consented to be part of an electronic database of patients who have agreed to be contacted about research for which they are eligible.

Dr Anna Barnett

Dr Anna Barnett has been in the role of Diabetes Network Manager since 2017, working to increase the quantity and quality of clinical research in diabetes taking place in Scotland.  Prior to joining the Diabetes Network, Anna was Clinical Trials Operations Manager for NHS Tayside and prior to that was Programme Manager for the Horizon 2020 project IMI DIRECT (diabetes stratification).  She obtained her PhD in Molecular Virology in 1996 and was a lab scientist for a long time, before moving into Clinical Trials project management about 20 years ago.

Dr Morag MacLean

Morag MacLean has over 15 years clinical trials experience and is currently a Senior Clinical Trial Manager at Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit. She has experience of managing trials in rheumatology, cardiology, respiratory, paediatrics and primary care. She is involved in all aspects of trial management, from protocol development & study set up through to close down and dissemination of results. In her role as senior trial manager she also oversees a portfolio of studies and supports a team to effectively and efficiently manage a variety of investigator-led academic trials.

Dr Mark Neilly

Dr Mark Neilly graduated with an MBChB from the University of Dundee in 2016 and completed Internal Medicine Training in the West of Scotland in 2022. He is currently undertaking a PhD in Cancer Sciences with the University of Glasgow. His role is centred around the clinical elements of PREDICT-Meso, namely the coordination of recruitment to Meso-ORIGINS.

Dr Filippo Pigazzani

Dr Filippo Pigazzani is a clinical research fellow and honorary specialty doctor in cardiology at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, United Kingdom. I trained in cardiology at the University of Parma, Italy, where I also did my PhD in Molecular Medicine. Main field of interest is the methodology of clinical trials; and since May 2017, Dr Pigazzani has been working on several clinical trials conducted by MEMO Research Unit including Febuxostat versus Allopurinol Streamlined Trial (FAST), Allopurinol and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with ischaemic heart disease (ALL-HEART), Treatment in Morning vs Evening (TIME) study, and Evaluating diuretics in normal care (EVIDENCE).

Professor Stuart Ralston

Professor Stuart Ralston graduated in Medicine from Glasgow University in 1978 and underwent higher medical training in General Internal Medicine and Rheumatology.  He previously held the chair of Medicine and Bone Metabolism at the University of Aberdeen and moved to Edinburgh University in 2005 when he now holds the Arthritis Research UK Chair of Rheumatology. He is currently director of Edinburgh University's online distance learning MSc in clinical trials and was director of Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit between 2009 and 2016.  He holds an honorary consultant rheumatologist position with NHS Lothian where he is clinical lead for the osteoporosis service and clinical director of the rheumatology service.  Professor Ralston has researched widely on the molecular and genetic basis of osteoporosis and other bone and joint diseases. He has a special interest in the pathogenesis and management of Paget’s disease of bone.  He is joint editor-in-chief of Calcified Tissue International and an editor of Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine. He was chair of the SIGN 142 guideline group on the Management of Osteoporosis and Prevention of Fragility Fractures in 2015 and 2021 and chairs one of the working groups of the Osteoporosis and Bone Research Academy for the Royal Osteoporosis Society.  He was chair of the Commission for Human Medicines (CHM) for the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) between 2013 and 2021 during which time the CHM advised that the Pfizer/BioNtech, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines should be approved for emergency use in the UK. He continues to act as an advisor to CHM on matters relation to Medicines for Women’s Health and Rheumatology.

Professor Julie Brittenden

Professor Julie Brittenden, Director of Research, Development and Innovation for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Director of the joint NHSGGG & Glasgow University Clinical Research Facilities; Professor of Vascular Surgery, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences University of Glasgow and a Consultant Vascular Surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow. Professor Brittenden’s research interests include the role of screening and specific biomarkers of cardiac risk in patients with peripheral arterial disease; evaluating and imaging of unstable carotid plaques; and venous disease. She is a co-founder of the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, which support health and social care innovation projects across the West of Scotland and address key challenges to improve health, social care and service delivery. National roles include, membership of Innovation Design Authority; Life Sciences Scotland Industry Leadership Group, and Non-Executive member of Innoscot Health.

Professor Nicholas Mills

Professor Nicholas Mills is the British Heart Foundation Chair of Cardiology at the University of Edinburgh and a Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Professor Mills is also the Lead and Senior Responsible Officer for the Data Driven Innovation in Health and Social Care programme for the University of Edinburgh. His research uses linked healthcare data to develop new approaches to improve the diagnosis of patients with acute cardiac conditions, and to evaluate their impact in practice. He is the chief investigator of a series of data-enabled randomised trials that have evaluated the implementation of cardiac biomarkers, care pathways and AI decision support tools in Scotland.

Erum Masood

Erum Masood is a Data Engineer within the Health Informatics Centre at University of Dundee. She is responsible for providing health data standardisation expertise, particularly OMOP-CDM to data partners from National Health Services (PHS, SAIL, NI DHSC), UK wide research groups and other organisations (HDR). Involved in standardising Clinical Research Datasets, Electronic Healthcare Records, Health Surveys and Registries as part of projects like Alleviate Pain Data Hub to support FAIR data standards.   

Gordon Milligan

Gordon Milligan is the Deputy Director of the Alleviate (Advanced Pain Discovery) Hub. He is based in the Health Informatics Centre (HIC) at the University of Dundee, and works with the Pain community to raise awareness of the Alleviate Pain Data Hub and the benefits we can provide around FAIR data access and beyond. Gordon has a degree in Computer Science and masters in Cognitive Science. He has spent most of his career working in the private sector as a software engineer or managing the delivery of large software and hardware projects. He is now focussed on using his private sector experience and skills and applying them to the Health Informatics field.

Dr Dimitrios Doudesis

Dr Doudesis is a Senior Data Scientist within the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh. His PhD thesis focused on improving diagnosis in acute cardiac care using statistical machine learning techniques. Additionally, he holds an MSc in Medical Statistics from the University of Southampton and a BSc in Statistics from the Athens University of Economics and Business. His research primarily focuses on statistical machine learning and the utilization of routinely collected healthcare data. He is currently undertaking several ambitious projects aimed at implementing machine learning algorithms within the NHS to provide decision-support tools for clinicians and enhance the identification of patients with heart attacks or heart failure in the Emergency Department.

Dr Doudesis is also the Lecturer for the Health Data Science course offered as part of the Data Science for Health and Social Care programme by the Usher Institute and DDI programme, where he plays a vital role in equipping students and healthcare professionals with the necessary data skills to maximise the value of data in healthcare.

Professor Chris Carlin

Chris Carlin is Consultant Physician and Clinical Lead for Respiratory Medicine, South Sector NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow. Research and innovation work focuses on co-design, implementation and evaluation of digital technology innovations to establish new diagnostic and care models for patients with COPD, severe respiratory failure and sleep disorders, as exemplars for management of other long-term conditions. He’s principal investigator in the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, notably leading on the DYNAMIC-AI clinical investigation which is exploring acceptability, feasibility and utility of live point of care risk-predictive AI insights for multi-disciplinary management of patients with COPD.

Dr Arlene Casey

Arlene Casey is a Research Fellow currently seconded from the Advanced Care Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, to the role of Senior Natural Language Processing (NLP) Development Scientist with Data Loch, a partnership by the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian. Her interests are in how Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be used to model information stored in free-text electronic health records and to extract this information to develop better understanding of medical conditions. Arlene previously worked in industry delivering data-driven insights. Arlene’s role in DataLoch is to support the building of NLP capacity to enable ACRC research applications.

Professor Zosia Miedzybrodzka

Zosia Miedzybrodzka studied medicine and trained as a clinical researcher and specialist genetics doctor at University of Aberdeen and with the NHS Grampian in the North of Scotland.

She uses the roles of service clinical director of NHS laboratory and clinical genetics in the north of Scotland, and honorary consultant clinical geneticist to deliver high quality impactful research in gene discovery, characterisation, clinical epidemiology and rigorous technology assessment. Her work is highly collaborative both locally, nationally and internationally and she has particular interests in evaluation of genomics, Huntington’s disease (HD) and prevention in hereditary cancer.

As chair of the Scottish genetics laboratories’ consortium she led NHS Scotland from testing for small panels of genes to exomes, with widespread cancer testing and beginnings of pharmacogenomics in everyday clinical practice and she led the NHS Scotland in 100,000 genomes project.

Recently her work on a breast and ovarian cancer gene, BRCA1, in Orkney came to public attention, leading to Woman and Home Magazine celebrating her as “Britain’s most amazing woman- Science Pioneer” for 2023.

Dr Tom Barlow

Tom joined the Chief Scientist Office in 2014 as senior research manager covering a range of areas including population health, health services, and health data science research and some aspects of NRS infrastructure.  Prior to that Tom worked in the UK Government in a number of policy areas including: emerging healthcare technologies, immunisation, prion diseases, and chemical safety.  Before joining the civil service, Tom was a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, the United States National Cancer Institute, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. 

Dr Heidi Green

Dr Heidi Green has spent her professional career dedicated to practicing creative research methods that identify barriers and enablers to facilitating inclusive clinical research. Heidi was awarded a PhD in Applied Health Sciences from the University of Aberdeen's Health Services Research Unit. Her PhD project focussed on participant recruitment to trials, and following this work she has specialised not only on how we recruit participants, but who those participants should be. She recently moved from the University of Aberdeen, to take up a new role as Director of Health Research Equity with COUCH Health, a small creative health engagement agency working with academics, pharma companies, and patients. Her work aims to increase the level of high-quality inclusive clinical research, with the goal of one day ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in clinical research.

Professor Brian McKinstry

Brian McKinstry is a general practitioner and Emeritus Professor of Primary Care eHealth at the University of Edinburgh. He leads SHARE the Scottish Health Research Register and until recently he led the Telescot programme of research into telehealth.

His research interests are mainly around remote information exchange between clinicians and patients, more recently focussed on eHealth and telehealthcare. The Telescot programme has carried out multiple randomised controlled trials and descriptive/qualitative studies in this area. These studies include telemonitoring of chronic obstructive airways disease, heart failure, high blood pressure (HBP) and diabetes, remote measurement of cough and respiratory rate, the use of machine learning on patient accrued data to develop improved telemonitoring algorithms and video-consulting in general practice.  He is clinical lead for Scale-Up BP, a large-scale implementation of telemonitoring  of HBP, and is exploring the use of routinely acquired data to evaluate this. He has with colleagues in the Scottish Government developed and is testing a home telemonitoring system to detect deterioration in people recently diagnosed with COVID-19.

Lesley Cousland

Lesley Cousland is a Mental Health Nurse with nearly 40 years experience working in many roles most of this supporting people living with dementia and their families/carers across NHS Tayside. Her last role before semi-retiring was Senior Charge Nurse in a busy dementia assessment ward. For the last two years has worked part-time as Clinical Studies Officer with a great team at ENRICH Scotland and has had the  privilege to get to know and work with some amazing people from care home communities and be part of new and exciting opportunities for care home research.

Dr Pamela Dicks

Dr Pamela Dicks manages the NRS Children’s Research Network which supports approximately 100 public funded and commercial clinical trials in paediatric medicine within the National Health Service in Scotland.  She sits on the NIHR Children’s Specialty group as the Scottish representative and represents NRS CRN on the coordinating group within European Network of European Networks at the European Medicines Agency. PPI is fundamental to the Children’s Network and in 2016 Pamela set up a Young Person’s Advocacy Group.  In 2017 she became a co-founder of the European Young Person’s Advocacy Group network.

Carol Porteous

Carol Porteous is the Patient and Public Involvement Lead for the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government. Carol has worked in patient public involvement and engagement for over ten years in Wales, England and Scotland.

Diana Garcia

Diana Garcia is the Project manager for the DecodeME project at the University of Edinburgh. DecodeME aims to identify the genetic differences between individuals with ME/CFS (Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) and those without the condition. Diana's academic background includes a MSc in Biotechnology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a PhD in Pharmacy from the University of Kent. Diana has over 8 years of experience in research and project management, spanning academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical devices sector. 

Sian Leary

Sian Leary is a member of the DecodeME Patient and Public Involvement Steering Group. Living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) for over a decade, she has experienced the profound impact it has on daily life, including five years during which she was severely ill and housebound. Sian has been deeply involved in shaping cohort delivery and participant processes, and enhancing marketing and communications for the project, all of which have faciliated the study's impressive completion rates. The PPI team's unique insights have significantly improved accessibility, community engagement, and the scientific direction of the study. Beyond DecodeME, Sian works for the World ME Alliance as Head of Advocacy and Communications. 

Sarah Robertson

Sarah Robertson recently joined the University of Edinburgh and is the Youth Engagement Lead for Generation Scotland. She previously worked for YouthLink Scotland (the National Youth Work Agency) as an Operational Manager with various remits over time including: Mental Health, Health & Wellbeing, Equality & Inclusion, Events & Networks, Training, Youth Participation, Participatory Democracy, Participatory Budgeting, Co-production and Youth Voice.  Sarah studied Community Education at Moray House 25 years ago and was a founding member of the Scottish Youth Parliament. She is currently an active member of the Rural Mental Health Forum. She founded the National Health & Wellbeing in Youth Work Network, Glasgow Youth Work Network and previously sat of the Scottish Government Child & Young Person Mental Health Joint Delivery Board and task groups. Sarah is particularly interested in partnership working and how young people can meaningfully engage in research leading to change.

Dr Niall Mc Goldrick

Niall is a Clinical Academic and Honorary Consultant in Dental Public Health based at the School of Dentistry, University of Dundee. He is the Clinical Lead for NHS Scotland's Oral Health Improvement Programmes for Homelessness and Scottish Prisons. Niall teaches Dental Public Health at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. His research interests include early detection of head and neck cancer, oral epidemiology, and social inclusion. Niall co-leads Patient and Public Involvement activity at Dundee Dental Hospital and School.

Amy Ferry

Amy Ferry is Senior Research Nurse in the Centre of Cardiovascular Science within the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include using qualitative methods to aid interpretation of clinical trial data, exploring the mechanisms that lead to positive clinician engagement with new technologies in health care, and aiming to understand patient experience of illness. Amy also runs the Patient and Public Involvement group within the research group.

Christine McLaughlin

Christine McLaughlin is a senior civil servant in the Scottish Government who began her career in the NHS as a finance trainee in Glasgow Royal Infirmary and has held a variety of roles in public sector consulting, before joining the civil service.  Christine was Chief Finance Officer for DG Health and Care before taking a career break in December 2019.  She returned just 3 months later to contribute to the Covid-19 response, taking on the role of Director of Finance for NHS Louisa Jordan – a 1,000 bed facility built and ready to use in 3 weeks – and then managed the decommissioning of the facility, returning the SEC back to a conference venue in time for COP26.   Christine then took on an interim role as Director of Planning for NHS Scotland, supporting the safe restart of services in summer 2020, before joining the Covid Testing Programme, becoming Director of Test & Protect in December 2020.  The programme has delivered over 16.5 million PCR tests and contacted over 2 million individuals in Scotland.  Whilst still retaining this role, Christine also now shares the role of Director for the Care & Wellbeing Portfolio with her colleague Richard Foggo.  This is a portfolio of reform for Health & Social Care, with an overall mission to improve healthy life expectancy and deliver fairer outcomes.  Work on Innovation is a key enabler to the Care & Wellbeing Portfolio.

Jane Grant

Jane Grant was appointed as Chief Executive of Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board from 1st April 2017. Jane was previously the Chief Executive of NHS Forth Valley for a period of three and a half years. Prior to joining NHS Forth Valley Ms Grant spent four and a half years as Chief Operating Officer for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

She joined the NHS in 1983 as a Management Services Officer within Highland Health Board, and also worked in Stobhill Hospital as Deputy Administrator in her early career. In the early 1990s, Jane moved to Lanarkshire Health Board as Hospital Administrator within Hairmyres Hospital. This was followed by a variety of posts within Lanarkshire, culminating in her appointment as General Manager of Hairmyres Hospital in 1999. Ms Grant moved back to Glasgow in 2000 to become the General Manager for Surgery in North Glasgow. She was appointed as Director of Surgery and Anaesthetics for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in early 2006 and became the Board’s Chief Operating Officer in 2009. She was appointed as Chief Executive of NHS Forth Valley in October 2013.

Professor Sir John Bell

Professor Sir John Bell CH, GBE, FRS is Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University.  President of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2006 to 2011); Chair, Office for the Strategic Coordination of Health Research until 2017;  Chair, Rhodes Trust; UK Life Sciences Champion since 2011.  Appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in 2015 for services to medicine, medical research and the life science industry. Co-developed and wrote both 2017 UK Life Sciences Industrial Strategy and 2021 Life Sciences Vision providing recommendations to HM Government on ensuring the long-term success of the life sciences sector.

Professor David Lowe

Professor David Lowe is the Clinical Director for health innovation within the Chief Scientist Office, Emergency Medicine consultant at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, and Clinical Director Innovation University of Glasgow. His academic interest focuses on clinical decision support and AI working to evaluate digital and medtech solutions working in collaboration across the triple helix. He established a research group EmQuire in the Queen Elizabeth that focus on data, decisions and devices. David is part of an exciting, ever-broadening innovation ecosystem that is improving the quality, efficiency, and sustainability of healthcare.

Carrie Thomson

Carrie Thomson holds 2 roles within Scottish Government, Programme Lead Innovation Collaboration with the Chief Scientist Office, and Portfolio Lead for Digital Lifelines Scotland with the Digital Health and Care Directorate.

Carrie leads the CSO Reducing Drug Deaths Innovation programme, and along with the ambition of the Digital Lifelines Scotland to digitally empower people who used drugs, the programmes are focused on reducing the risk of death and harm for people who use drugs through digital solutions.

This joint portfolio links to Carrie’s academic and NHS background in addiction services and draws on her experience from over 10 years at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the Office for Digital Health.

Dr John Thomson

Dr John Thomson is a National Associate Clinical Director for NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery of Health and Social Care with a portfolio that includes diagnostics, data and the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway.  His clinical practice is as a Consultant Gastroenterologist in Aberdeen.  He has a research background in bioinformatics having undertaken his PhD between Aberdeen University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Scottish Quality and Safety Fellow and for more than 10 years has been a digital health leader across numerous local, regional and national programs.

Jason White

Jason White is Head of Innovation at the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), with a focus on the delivery, alongside partners, of the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway that seeks to both assess and implement high impact, evidence based technological based innovations across NHS Scotland. Following a career in the private sector, Jason recently spent several years as an Assistant Director in the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust in the NHS in Northern Ireland. During this time, Jason led the development of a number of innovative services that were adopted at a national level. Through a secondment to the NI Government, he also set up and delivered a large-scale Early Intervention Transformation Programme, bringing together five Government Departments and a range of Arms-Length-Bodies (including NHS Trusts), which led to an innovative funding partnership with a large American philanthropy organisation. A Generation Q and Salzburg Global Fellow, Jason also has had the opportunity to study health and public sector leadership at both INSEAD and Harvard. 

Tom Steele

Tom Steele was appointed as Chair of the Scottish Ambulance Service Board on 1 June 2018. From 2014 until this appointment, he served as a Non-Executive Board member and Chair of the Audit Committee at NHS Lanarkshire and as a member of the South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Integration Joint Board. Currently Tom also co-chairs the NHS Scotland Innovation Design Authority Board and chairs the Advisory Board for Volunteering in NHS Scotland. Previously he spent his career in management consultancy with KPMG and then in the IT industry, where for 20 years he held various senior executive positions with Fujitsu UK. Tom has wide leadership and corporate governance experience of large, complex organisations.

Professor Jason Leitch

Jason has worked for the Scottish Government since 2007 and in January 2015 was appointed as The National Clinical Director.

He was appointed CBE in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

The National Clinical Director is responsible for quality in the health and social care system, including patient safety and person-centred care, NHS planning, and implementing quality improvement methods across the government and the broader public sector.

He is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He was a 2005-06 Quality Improvement Fellow at IHI.

He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Dundee and a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde.

Jason is a non-executive Board member of the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland,  a Board member of The Nazareth Trust and  a trustee of the Indian Rural Evangelical Fellowship (UK) which runs a children’s’ home and schools in southeast India.

He qualified as a dentist in 1991 and was a Consultant Oral Surgeon in Glasgow. He has a doctorate from the University of Glasgow, a Masters in Public Health from Harvard and is a fellow of the three UK surgical Royal Colleges.

Jason is an internationally recognised expert in healthcare quality. He speaks around the world and has advised Governments in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, The Republic of Ireland, Jordan, Canada, Brazil and South Africa.

In 2020 and 2021 he was awarded the Fletcher of Saltoun award from the Saltire Society, elected to the US National Academy of Medicine and awarded an Honorary Membership of the Faculty of Public Health all for his contribution to the UK and Scottish response to the global pandemic.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he has played a key role in public health communication and engagement. He regularly featured at Scottish Government press conferences as well as public engagement on regional and national television and radio. He received praise for his ability to translate complex scientific information to the public, providing calm and clear advice

Mark Logan

Mark is the Chief Entrepreneurial Advisor to the Scottish Government, a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, and a Senior Enterprise Fellow at the University of Strathclyde.  Mark has over 25 years of senior leadership experience in the tech and start-up sector, including as COO of Skyscanner, one of Europe's most successful technology companies, where he was responsible for the general management of the business during the company’s high-growth phase, culminating in the sale of the business for £1.45B in 2016. In 2014, the Institute of Directors named him Director of the Year and in 2016 he won the UK Digital Masters award for Excellence in General Management.  In 2019, he was conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Glasgow. In 2022, he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his contribution to Scotland’s technology industry. He is the author of the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review and co-author of the Pathways: A new approach for women in Entrepreneurship review which, together, form the foundations of the Scottish Government’s policy strategy for entrepreneurial ecosystem development. He is also co-founder of Ipso-Facto Management, a consultancy to start-up and scale-ups in the tech sector, an investor and non-executive director.

Mark Cook

Mark has spent 30 years in roles within the health sector including biologicals/pharmaceuticals, medical technology and consultancy.

In February 2022 Mark became Co Chair of the Life Sciences Industrial Leadership Group in Scotland, he also continues to support decision making for non-medicine technologies through membership of the Scottish Health Technology Group plus as a member of SHIP he raises the profile for the Life Sciences Sector in Scotland.

Current focus for the Life Sciences ILG is the refresh of the sector strategy to drive growth and Mark is leading on this work to ensure we not only meet, but exceed, our goal of £8 Billion generated by the Scottish Life Sciences sector by 2025 .

Commercially Mark Chairs the Board on Brain Health Scotland Life Sciences Limited which seeks to widen access to clinical trials in the neurodegenerative disease space.

Mark is proud to be able to support the Jane Moore Trust, a charity which provides residential education for young people.

Mark is Chairs ABHI Scotland and has published on healthcare resource utilization.