Antony Chuter
Antony Chuter is passionate about improving healthcare for all in the UK. He has lived with chronic pain for over 22 years and he is especially interested in patient safety and also E-Health. He chairs the Patient Liaison Committee at the British Pain Society, is chair of Pain UK; a charity which works to improve the support and care of people who live with pain and he is a past chair of the Patient Partnership Group at the RCGP.
Antony is an experienced lay co applicant - having worked on more than 6 national projects. He believes that healthcare research is the way to make substantial change in patient safety, care and experience of healthcare in the UK and beyond.
Antony is a deputy chair of the QResearch Advisory Board.
Competing Interests: none
Dr Patricia Wilkie
Patricia Wilkie is a social scientist particularly interested in the patient perspective. She is Chair and honorary president of the National Association for Patient Participation. She has spent much of her working life as a researcher in academic departments of medicine. Research topics included the ethical, social and psychological implications of genetic disease, of HIV and Aids and aspects of changes in prescribing. Patricia helped establish the National Childbirth Trust in Scotland and has worked with many voluntary organisations including the Huntington Chorea Association and the Patients Association.
Patricia established patient groups in several Medical Royal Colleges and was the first lay co-opted member on the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and chairman of their lay committee. She has chaired a research ethics committee and has been a lay associate at the GMC. She was one of the first of two lay members of the Committee on Safety for Medicines and chaired the working group on patient reporting of adverse drug reactions.
Competing Interests: none
Mr Jon Ford
Jonathan (Jon) Ford is a retired economist. He was educated at Colfe’s School and the University of Kent. After working in econometrics in the electricity supply industry, he joined the British Medical Association (BMA) in 1976 as an Economic Research Officer and retired as head of its Health Policy and Economic Research Unit (HPERU) in 2013. A specialist in Labour Economics originally, his interests now include Health Economics, Resource Allocation and Health and Social Policy.
Competing Interests: none
Dr Caroline Mitchell
I have have been a GP partner for over 30 years. In addition to part time clinical practice, I joined the Academic Unit of Primary Medical Care at the University of Sheffield in 1993, initially as an undergraduate teacher and later as a Senior Clinical Lecturer. I lead the ‘Under-served populations’ research theme in the department and my research and clinical practice focuses on inclusion health.
My research interests are in the overlap of physical health problems with severe mental illness and / or substance use and in co-design approaches to support inclusive primary care research with underserved populations.
I have both quantitative and qualitative research methods expertise including the RCT evaluation of complex interventions in primary care.
Competing Interests: none
Professor Carol Coupland
Carol Coupland is a Professor of Medical Statistics in Primary Care at the University of Nottingham and works one day a week as a senior researcher in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She has conducted many research projects using QResearch data which have been published in high impact journals such as the BMJ. Her key research interests are in the development and validation of algorithms for predicting risk of disease and evaluating safety of commonly prescribed medications.
Competing Interests: Consultant for ClinRisk Ltd.
Dr Paula Dhiman
At the Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Paula investigates how medical research is done, which is known as meta-research or ‘research on research’. She focuses on the methodological conduct and reporting of non-randomised research, with a view to help improve the quality and integrity of future research. Her work is funded by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and will include a methodological audit of studies funded under any NIHR BRC.
Much of her work experience has been as a medical statistician within Primary Care at the University of Nottingham. More recently, she worked as an advisor for the Research Design Service (East Midlands), helping researchers and clinicians apply for funding for their research through study design, and grant writing.
She was awarded a PhD in Medical Statistics (Primary Care) from the University of Nottingham in 2015. She investigated the methodology behind how new risk factors are assessed and incorporated into established risk prediction models. Her research led me to combine statistical and health economic methodologies to assess new risk factors by means of their cost effectiveness.
Competing Interests: None
Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox
Julia Hippisley-Cox is the Chief Investigator for QResearch and Professor in Clinical Epidemiology and General Practice at the University of Oxford. She is a Professorial Fellow and a Trustee of St Anne's College Oxford and an NHS GP, an Honorary Consultant with NHS England and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. Until Aug 2023 JHC had a 50% shareholding in ClinRisk Ltd, co-owning it with her husband who is a director. The company licences software both to the private sector and to NHS bodies or bodies that provide services to the NHS (through GP electronic health record providers until Aug 2023, pharmacies, hospital providers and other NHS providers). This software implements algorithms developed from access to the QResearch database during her time at the University of Nottingham. in August 2023, 100% of the shareholding for ClinRisk Ltd was donated to Endeavour Health Care Charitable Trust and the company has been renamed to Endeavour Predict Ltd.
JHC also has the following roles
- Member of Steering Committee for Centre for Personalised Medicine, which is based at St Anne's College.
- Former Trustee and Committee member of the EMIS National User Group.
- Former Chair of the NERVTAG group on COVID risk stratification
- Former Member of the SAGE groups and Department of Health Risk Stratification Implementation Group
Dr Jennifer Hirst
Jennifer is a Senior Researcher working as part of the QResearch team as Senior Researcher and Epidemiologist. She is currently leading a study to determine the uptake, safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination in people living with blood cancer using the QResearch database.
She has expertise in quantitative methods, meta-analysis, managing UK-based and international multicentre clinical studies, clinical epidemiology and qualitative data collection and analysis. She is also module coordinator for the Meta-analysis module which is part of the University of Oxford's Evidence Based Health Care, Medical Statistics and Systematic Review Masters programme
Jennifer is a deputy chair of the QResearch Advisory Board.
Competing interests: none
Dr Sharon Dixon
Sharon has been a GP for 25 years, and a part time GP partner since 2010. She is involved in medical student teaching, including on health inequalities and the social determinants of health, and in supporting medical student advocacy for refugees and asylum seekers.
Sharon also works as a GP researcher. She has been involved in qualitative research on primary care perspectives on pathways to care across a range of service needs (including using diagnostic tests, safeguarding, domestic violence and abuse, endometriosis, and Female Genital Mutilation), research on understanding and improving equity in research, and research on partnership priority setting for technology development in women’s health. She is currently an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow, undertaking a mixed-methods research study seeking to improve the evidence base for managing adolescent period pain in primary care.
Sharon is a trustee of Oxford Against Cutting, a rights based advocacy charity working to end harmful cultural practices suffered by girls and women living in the Thames Valley. She has acted (acts) as a college representative for the RCGP at FGM and safeguarding meetings.
Competing interests: none
Dr Ian Wood
Ian is an NHS GP in Berkshire and Clinical Director at EMIS Group, where his work focuses on General Practice, Research and Population Health and has overseen the introduction of new clinical applications in these domains.
He is also the UK Medical Director for Big Health who make digital treatments for mental health disorders. He is a current board member of RCGP Thames Valley and past First5 Chair for the college.
Competing interests: none