Timetable

Dr. Klassen became the Director of Research for the Manitoba Institute of Child Health and Associate Dean, Academic in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, in charge of the George and Fay Yee Center for Healthcare Innovation in September, 2010.
From 1999 to 2009 Dr. Klassen served as Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta. During the same period Dr. Klassen was the Director of the Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence and Director of the Evidence-based Practice Center at the University of Alberta. He is a clinician scientist whose clinical base is Pediatric Emergency Medicine, and has been active in Pediatric Emergency Research Canada collaborating on a national research program involving randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews and knowledge translation. He has a consistent record of national and international peer reviewed funding, along with a publication record that has included many articles in the highest impact medical journals.
In 2009, Dr. Klassen co-founded StaR Child Health, an international group aimed at improving the design, conduct and publication of randomized controlled trials in children. In recognition for his lifetime contributions, he was elected into the Institute of Medicine in 2010 in the foreign associate category. He is also a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Dr. Klassen's research has had a large impact on the practice of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, which was recognized when he received a 2011 Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Canadian Medical Association Journal Top Achievements in Health Research Award. In 2011 he was also awarded the Networks for Centres of Excellence (NCE) grant, entitled TRanslating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK). In 2012 Dr. Klassen was appointed to the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Ruth Gilbert is a clinically qualified and accredited paediatrician trained in epidemiology. She is Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health, UCL Institute of Child Health and Honorary Consultant Epidemiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust. Her research has focussed on addressing prognostic, diagnostic, and intervention questions to inform policy on screening, particularly for infections in pregnancy and early childhood. Her expertise is in the use of evidence synthesis methods, involving systematic reviews, meta-analysis, primary studies and analyses of routinely collected data, to address policy questions.

Dr Sourabh Dutta is currently an Associate Professor of Neonatology in the Department of Pediatrics and a staff neonatologist at McMaster Children's Hospital, Ontario, Canada. Dr Dutta received his medical degrees from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and after working as a Senior Resident in Pediatrics for 3 years, he went to The Children's Hospital at West Mead, Australia for a fellowship in Neonatology. He returned to India and completed his PhD in Neonatology at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER). Prior to his appointment at McMaster, Dr Dutta was working at PGIMER for 12 years, most recently as an Additional Professor. In addition to his clinical knowledge and skills, Dr Dutta has always been very involved in education, teaching pediatrics, neonatology and research methodology. He has taught in research methodology courses conducted by the RCPCH, UK and the NIH, USA. Dr Dutta is an experienced researcher and holds numerous grants as a principal investigator. His area of interest is in neonatal sepsis and he has published extensively on the topic.

Peter is Director of NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC), HTA (Health Technology Assessment programme) and was first appointed in 2006. He was previously a senior lecturer (visiting) at the Wessex Institute and a consultant in Public Health Medicine at Southampton City PCT. In his earlier career he was a principal in general practice. Peter has also lead the HTA Clinical Trials work stream and was series editor of the Health Technology Assessment journal. He has a research interest in systematic reviews.

Martin Burton is Consultant Otolaryngologist at the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He is also Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Oxford and Lecturer in Clinical Medicine at Balliol College. He was the founding co-ordinating editor of the Cochrane Ear, Nose & Throat Disorders Group (www.cochrane-ent.org) and Clinical Lead of the ENT & Audiology Library of the UK’s National Library for Health. He is interested in teaching and was an examiner for the Royal College of Surgeons of England IMRCS and IDOHNS exams. He trained as a medical student at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and did his early clinical training in Oxford and Bristol. He was a Fulbright Scholar and undertook research training at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan. Following a period as Lecturer in Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne, he completed his doctoral thesis on the safety of cochlear implantation in small children. His higher surgical training was completed in London and as Fellow in Otology, Neurotology & Skull Base Surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. His clinical practice is otological - particularly middle ear surgery, tinnitus and balance disorders. He is interested in the application of evidence- (and wisdom-) based medicine in Otolaryngology and in otolaryngological epistemology and heuristics.

Lesley has been Director of CRD since 2006 and has been involved in evidence synthesis in healthcare since the late 1980's, previously running the MRC Clinical Trials Unit meta-analysis research programme. Together with colleagues in Cambridge and Oxford, she helped establish the methodology and framework for individual patient data (IPD) reviews. She was a founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration, co-convenes the Cochrane Collaboration IPD Meta-analysis Methods Group and is a member of the Collaboration Methods Board and the Handbook Editorial Advisory Panel. Recently, Lesley has also overseen and been actively involved in the development of an international prospective register of systematic reviews which CRD launched in February 2011.

Margaret McCartney is a GP in Glasgow who started writing for the press over a decade ago after a newspaper article insisted that a regular CT body scan was a great way to stay well. She has written for most broadsheets and is a regular contributor to the BMJ and Radio 4’s Inside Health. Her book ‘The Patient Paradox- why sexed up medicine is bad for your health’ was published in 2012.

Sally has a nursing and public health background. As director of Crowe Associates Ltd www.crowe-associates.co.uk , 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 in the UK and Europe. Teaching critical appraisal and understanding evidence skills to a wide range of people, 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 Priority Setting Partnerships of patient and clinician groups, and Sally is currently working with partnerships in pressure ulcers, pre term birth, and multiple sclerosis.

With this increasing interest and experience of prioritisation of research Sally has recently joined the Cochrane Collaboration as a co convenor of the Agenda and Priority Setting Methods Group.

May 2012

Martine took up the post of Head of Patient Experience at Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust in November 2010. This was a new senior leadership role for the hospital designed to ensure visibility and momentum for a Trust wide patient experience programme.
A Registered Nurse of over 28 years, Martine has extensive experience of leadership and management within health services at strategic, operational and clinical levels. Her career has included roles in both acute and primary care, and in education. Martine has significant Board experience over a number of years as an Executive Director and Trustee.
Martine leads patient experience improvement across the Trust, the hospital is developing a culture of patient centred care through the work of clinical teams redesigning pathways of care. An important part of Martine’s role is maintaining a regular clinical commitment.

Deborah Cohen is investigations editor of the BMJ, which she joined after studying medicine at both Manchester University and Universite de Rennes. Whilst at university she intercalated in medical journalism, edited her university publication and worked on a newspaper in Ghana covering health and human rights. 
Deborah has reported from a variety of places including the West Bank, Kenya and Ethiopia. As investigations editor of the BMJ, much of her work has focused on drug and medical device regulation, access to clinical data and conflicts of interest. She has collaborated on documentaries with the BBC, Channel 4 News and Dispatches, and Al-Jazeera, as well has having working jointly with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

PauPauline McCormack is a research associate at Policy Ethics and Life Sciences (PEALS) research centre and has a background in education, social policy and participatory methods. She will present her research on the impact that the metal-on-metal hip fiasco has had on patients’ lives.
Pauline’s research encompasses disability, patient participation and bioethics with particular interests in in notions of power, the patient voice, perceptions of quality of life and how policy serves individuals.
She is currently researching patient inclusion strategies for RD-CONNECT which aims to provide an integrated platform connecting databases, registries, biobanks and clinical bioinformatics for rare disease research.

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/peals/people/profile/pauline.mccormack

Nick had a 20 year career in analytical science, process technology and general management in the chemical, pharmaceutical and contract laboratory industries prior to joining NICE as the associate director for the new Diagnostics Assessment Programme (DAP) in January 2010. The DAP is a specialist programme at NICE to evaluate the clinical and cost effectiveness of innovative medical diagnostic technologies leading to guidance on their adoption to the NHS in England. Nick is responsible for the on-going management and development of the programme and also leads on NICE's activities to develop methods and processes for evaluating companion diagnostics across its pharmaceutical and diagnostic evaluation programmes.

Professor Paul Glasziou was previously the Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, and Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine in the department of Primary Care at the University of Oxford, and also continues work as a part-time General Practitioner. The author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications, in medical decision making, clinical trials, systematic reviews and evidence-based medicine. He was editor of the BMJs journal of Evidence-Based Medicine for 10 years. He is a member of the management committee of the 3 largest clinical trials ever conducted in Australia: the LIPID, FIELD, and ADVANCE studies. He has published 6 books on evidence-based health care and decision making: Systematic Reviews in Health Care, Decision Making in Health Care and Medicine: integrating evidence and values, An Evidence-Based Medicine Workbook, Clinical Thinking: Evidence, Communication and Decision-making, Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM, and Evidence-Based Medical Monitoring: Principles and Practice. In 2009 he was awarded an NHMRC Australia Fellowship, and will move back to Australia.

Khamis A. Elessi MSc, MD, Palestinian Board in PM&R. He had his medical education and clinical training in various countries (phillipines, Israel and the UK) with two years in Bristish hospitals. He has chaired the medical rehab team at Elwafa Med Rehab Hospital in Gaza for the last 15 years and mainly worked in the field of Neuro-Rehabilitation and Pain Management. Now he is full time Assistant Professor at the college of medicine in the Islamic University-Gaza where he founded the first Palastinian EBM unit to promote EBM throughout Gaza Strip.

Catherine Gallagher, PhD is a professor and Director of the Cochrane Collaboration College for Policy at George Mason University, just outside of Washington, D.C. The mission of the Cochrane Policy College is to provide policy-makers with rigorous evidence as they broach health and social policy decisions and appropriations. She has appeared numerous times before the US Congress and on televised policy interviews, providing commentary on the rigor of evidence behind current decision-making. She serves on the Cochrane Fields Executive, is the founder and Director of Cochrane’s Justice Health Field, and is currently an appointee to boards serving the Institute of Medicine and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Her team is among the founding members of the Cochrane Response Consortium – a group of Cochrane contributors dedicated to exploring rapid evidence synthesis methods.

Prof maitland specialises in paediatric infectious disease, critical care and international child health. She leads a research group in East Africa whose major research portfolio includessevere malaria, bacterial sepsis and severe malnutrition. her group has recently completed the largest trial of criticall ill children ever taken in Africa (FEAST Trial) examining fluid resusitation strategies in children with severe febrile illness which is likely to lead to major changes in health policy in children with severe illness in sub-Saharan Africa. her next trial (TRACT) will include 4000 children admitted to hospital with severe and life threatening anaemia and will examin transfusion and treatment strategies to improve the shot- and long-term outcome.

Ken Stein graduated in medicine from Bristol University, then trained and worked as a general practitioner in Australia and Hampshire before specialising in public health medicine in Southampton, where he subsequently became Deputy Director, NETSCC, HTA. In 1999 he moved to Exeter where he took up the position of Consultant in Public Health Medicine at North and East Devon Health Authority, then Director of Public Health for Mid Devon Primary Care Trust. Ken combined this NHS work with academic work at the University of Exeter as Director of the Peninsula Technology Assessment Group (PenTAG), before becoming a full time academic public health physician at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Exeter in 2003. He was appointed to a Chair in Public Health in 2007 and is now also Deputy Director of the Peninsula Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (PenCLAHRC). His research interests include the use of quality of life estimates in health technology assessment, synthesis of qualitative research, and the use of decision analytic modelling to support planning and management in the NHS.

Steve Humphries is a worl-renowned expert in cardiovascular genetics, a field in which he has worked for over 30 years. After graduating from sussex university, he obtained his PhD in Biochemistry in Glasgow in 1974. following three years postdoctoral ork in the USA he worked in both St Mary's and charing Cross Hospitals in London, before moving to UCL in 1991. He is currently the British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Genetics at the Royal Free and university College School of Medicine, London, where he heads a group of more than 30 scientists, students and technicians. current work includes the study of genes involved in lipid metabolism, inflamation, coagulation and fibrinolysis, and with genes expressed in cells of the artery wall. Much of his work has been in applying genetics in population-based studies, thus bridging genetics and epidemiology. current work focuses on the identification of the molecular mechanisms of the effects of gene variants and the use of the genetic tests to identify at-risk individuals, specifically those at risk of premature heart disease.
Professor Humpries has developed and implemented molecular strategies to study the causes and clinical and psychological consequences of Familial Hyperchlosterolaemia (FH), a monogenic cause of cardiovascular disease. He co-directed the Department of Health funded UK-wide pilot for cascade testing of FH, was the Lead clinician Advisor for 2008 NICE Guidelines on FH, is the project Director for the RCP FH Audit, and is an active member of the HEARTUK FH Guideline implementation Group. He is the CEO of the UCL Genetics institute, and is actively involved with teaching, ethics and public awareness aspects of the developement of genetic testing for complex late-onset disorders. Professor Humpries has published over 600 papers and more than 200 review articles. he is Editor-in-Chief of Atherosclerosis.

Klim Mcpherson is a visiting professor of public health epidemiology at Oxford University and Fellow of New College. He chairs the National Heart Forum, concerned to prevent premature mortality from cardiovascular disease. His research is in epidemiology methods and women's health.
He was co-author of the Foresight Report on Tackling Obesities. With the National Heart Forum he has a research group examining the role of micro simulation in better understanding public health interventions. He has chaired the British Breast Group, the European Public Health association and the Society for Social Medicine among other research bodies.

David Tovey has been the Editor in Chief of The Cochrane Library since January 2009. He worked previously as Editorial Director for the BMJ Evidence Centre, which is the division of the BMJ Group that produces Clinical Evidence and its counterpart for the public BestTreatments, BMJ Point of Care and Best Practice. Until 2003 David worked as a General Practitioner in an urban practice in South London for 15 years. During that time he also undertook roles in continuing professional development for primary care professionals and was a clinical governance lead for a Primary Care Group.

I have worked at the BMJ (British Medical Journal, bmj.com) for more than 20 years. I am one of three deputy editors and am also senior research editor. I lead the BMJ team that peer reviews and publishes original research articles, and also lead our international outreach programme, with key responsibility for helping researchers to maximise their chances of publication and for encouraging authors to send the BMJ their research. I write and maintain the BMJ’s editorial policies and instructions to authors, and have co-developed the BMJ’s regular workshops on peer review training. On behalf of the BMJ I have been a member of several research-related organisations and groups: the council of the Committee on Publication Ethics (2008-10), the CONSORT 2010 group on reporting randomised controlled trials, and the SPIRIT group on reporting trial protocols. I am also participating in strategic efforts to encourage the sharing of raw research data, to develop prognosis research methods, to revise the EU clinical trials directive, and to improve the practice of grant review. I helped to develop BMJ Open - the online-only open access general medical journal launched by BMJ Group in early 2011 (bmjopen.bmj.com) – and am its Editor in chief. BMJ Open is dedicated to publishing medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas and considers all research study types, from study protocols to phase I trials to meta-analyses, including small or potentially low-impact studies. Before joining the BMJ I trained in medicine at London’s Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and then specialised in psychiatry, gaining MRCPsych in 1989. In 1998 I was an honorary research fellow at the School for Public Policy, University College London. I have presented programmes and series for BBC World Service radio, presented TVam’s Doc Spot, co-authored the HarperCollins Consumer Guide to Mental Health (winner of the Medical Journalists' Association best book of 1995), and edited the BMJ book Countdown to Community Care (1993).

Ginny Barbour joined PLoS in 2004 and was one of the founding co-editors of PLoS Medicine; she was appointed the journal’s first Chief Editor in 2008. Her background in publishing comes from The Lancet. She studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, and then medicine at UCL and Middlesex Hospital School of Medicine, London. Her specialist clinical medical training was in Haematology at the Royal Free Hospital, London. She was awarded a DPhil from Oxford University in 1997 for research into globin gene regulation. Her post-doctoral work was at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the Secretary of the Committee on Publication Ethics, and is a member of the Ethics Committee for the World Association of Medical Editors. She has participated in discussions on a number of guidelines in publishing, including revisions to the CONSORT statement, and the development of the PRISMA statement. Her interests in publishing include not only open-access, but also the more rigorous reporting of research and the importance of taking an evidence-based approach to the priorities of global health.

Les Roberts holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and did a post-doctorate fellowship in epidemiology at the Centre for Disease Control and afterwards worked for WHO in Rwanda during the 1994 civil war and then for the international Rescue Committee. Les had led over 50 surveys in 17 countries, mostly measuring mortality in times of war. In recent years he has taken part in studies to measure mortality in Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Zimbabwe and Central African Republic. His present research focuses on developing methods to document human rights violations, and on statistically representative surveillance methodologies.

Dr Spiegel is the Deputy Director of the Division of Programme Support and Management at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as a Senior Fellow for the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins and Emory Schools of Public Health. He was previously Chief of the Public Health and HIV Section at UNHCR. Before UNHCR, Dr Spiegel worked as a Medical Epidemiologist in the International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Previously he worked as a medical coordinator with Médecins Sans Frontiéres and Médecins du Monde in refugee camps in Kenya and DRC as well as a consultant for numerous organisations including the Canadian Red Cross and the Pan American Health Organisation.

Dr Spiegel's research interests in humanitarian emergencies are in HIV, epidemiological methods, and health information systems. He has published extensively in the field of humanitarian emergencies. He has won numerous awards including CDC's Charles C Shepard award for outstanding research in Assessment and Epidemiology.

Dr. Bonnix Kayabu is currently enrolled in the International Doctorate School in Global Health (INDIGO) at Trinity College Dublin. He is focusing on the potential role of systematic reviews in humanitarian emergencies.

Bonnix has been coordinating the Evidence Aid project since 2010. As part of this work he has met many key aid workers and conducted a needs assessment survey to identify their attitudes towards systematic reviews and other research evidence. Before joining Evidence Aid, Bonnix worked as a physician in DR Congo and Rwanda. He has a strong interest in improving the accessibility of systematic reviews in low-and middle-income countries.

Dr. An-Wen Chan is a scientist at Women's College Research Institute and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. He is also a Mohs surgeon in the Ricky Kanee Schachter Dermatology Program at Women's College Hospital. Dr. Chan is a Rhodes Scholar who completed his sub-specialty surgical fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Chan has a clinical and research interest in the skin problems of solid organ transplant patients. He directs a specialized transplant dermatology clinic dedicated to skin cancer, infections, and other skin problems in this immunosuppressed patient population. Dr. Chan also studies the epidemiology and innovative treatment of high-risk skin cancers to help reduce their incidence and impact in transplant patients. Dr. Chan is also a recognized expert in clinical trial quality, biases, and methods. He has researched and published extensively on this subject in leading medical journals, and chairs the international SPIRIT Initiative to improve the quality of clinical trial protocols. He served as a Special Advisor to the Clinical Trials Unit of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and helped coordinate the World Health Organization's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform in Geneva.

Tom is one of the editors of the Cochrane ARI Group, a member of four other review groups, two methods groups and the Cochrane Vaccines Field. His main research interests are the application of systematic reviewing methods to studies of vaccines and antivirals of different designs (such as trials, economic evaluations and epidemiological studies) and peer review. Tom was a visiting fellow at the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford between 1999 and 2001 and coordinated the Italian National guidelines programme during 2001-2003 and presently is the scientific lead of the Italian HTA programme on devices and diagnostics. While pursuing his research activity, Tom has published over two hundred papers and co-authored five books. Tom has co-reviewed the evidence of the effects of editorial and grant application peer review and the effects of interventions to prevent and treat the common cold (funded by a British Medical Association HC Roscoe Fellowship), of several vaccines and of physical interventions to interrupt transmission of ARIs for a variety of funders.
Tom’s recent activity has centered on the development of methods to incorporate regulatory information (data and comments) into Cochrane reviews using the example of the drug oseltamivir/Tamiflu for influenza.

Dr James Quekett qualified from Bristol University medical school in 1994 qualifying as a General Practitioner in 2000. Over the past 12 years he has been involved with the development of eLearning, initially as an author before joining the team at Doctors.net.uk in 2008.
He has particular interest in the evolving use of social media in defining learning needs, how a doctor engages with learning within the online environment and how online is different to traditional offline learning. He remains a working GP in Gloucestershire and is also a GP appraiser looking at the CPD needs of qualifies GPs.

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.