Membership of the committee
Core membership
Chair: The Chair is an independent academic health scientist appointed, through an open recruitment process, by Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, Chief Investigator for QResearch. The initial term is for 2 years which can be renewed annually for up to 3 years.
Deputy Chair: The Deputy Chair is an independent academic health scientist appointed, through an open recruitment process, by Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, Chief Investigator for QResearch. The initial term is for 2 years which can be renewed annually for up to 3
Members: There will be a minimum of 8 members of the committee including the Chair, Deputy Chair, Chair of the QResearch Advisory Board and Professor Hippisley-Cox (Chief Investigator and Founder of QResearch). New members of the committee will appointed by the Chair of the Science Committee and Chief Investigator for QResearch following an advertised open recruitment process to increase diversity. The initial term will be two years. Members are invited to apply from relevant academic disciplines including, for example, clinicians, statistics, epidemiology, health economics and patient experience from within and external to the university. A minimum number of members for the meeting to be quorate is 5 members.
Secretariat: The secretariat is provided by Ms Claire Meadows (Personal Assistant).
Observers: Observers are welcome to join specific meetings by prior arrangement which can be organised by contacting [email protected].
Dr Paula Dhiman (chair)
Dr Paula Dhiman is an NDORMS Senior Research Fellow in Medical Statistics. She is the Nigel James Junior Research Fellow in Medical Statistics at Pembroke College. She is a member of the UK EQUATOR Centre based in the Centre for Statistics in Medicine at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. Paula is motivated to improve the design, quality, and integrity of future medical research by advancing statistical methodology research, reviewing medical research and educating the next generation of researchers.
Paula is funded by Cancer Research UK Prevention and Population Research Committee for a project to develop sample size guidance for prediction models developed using machine learning. She is also the cross-cutting statistical lead for the NIHR Blood Transfusion Research Unit in Data Driven Transfusion Practice. Her research interests lie in three areas, statistical methodology, applied statistics and meta-research, linked by a focus on prediction modelling for medical research.
Paula 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, which led her to combine statistical and health economic methodologies to assess new risk factors by means of their cost effectiveness. She has extensive experience in working with very large and routinely collected datasets, including QResearch, CPRD and THIN, and advising clinicians and researchers regarding their research proposals.
Joined November 2020, first term, chair from August 2021
Dr Brian McMillan (Deputy Chair)
Dr Brian McMillan is a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Centre for Primary Care and Health Services Research, a practising GP, and a Registered Health Psychologist. His research interests include the application of digital technology and psychological theory to improving patients' experiences of primary care. He is currently exploring how patients’ online access to their primary care health record could enhance patient activation.
Brian is funded by the NIHR as an NIHR Advanced Fellow. After qualifying with a BSSc in Psychology from Queen's University Belfast, he completed a PhD at the University of Leeds and worked there as a Research Fellow before returning to student life to study Medicine. He completed his medical academic foundation training in York, was an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Sheffield during his GP training, and then moved to Manchester to take up a post as an NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Primary Care in 2016.
Joined September 2021, first term
Ms Polly Kerr
Polly is Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Manager for the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. She has a background in health communication and supports researchers in the department in integrating patient and public experience and expertise into their projects. She works closely with PPI colleagues across the Medical Sciences Division to deliver training and establish consistent PPI policies, and is also leading on national work to develop accreditation for PPI staff. She has a keen interest in promoting the relevance and importance of health research to a wider audience, and in ensuring that such research is appropriate and accessible to patients and the general public.
Joined February 2021, first term, second term started 27th January 2023
Dr Rebecca Harmston
Rebecca is a research scientist and has worked at both Cancer Research UK and The University of Cambridge. She holds a B.Sc (Hons), M.Res, and Ph.D in molecular biology and the life sciences. Rebecca has been working in patient involvement in research as a patient representative for nearly eight years. Rebecca is an active member of a number of health research panels including a NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Committee and the NICE Health Technology Assessment Committee D. She has a wealth of experience including writing patient facing documents, ethics, reviewing grant applications and experience as a research co-applicant.
Rebecca is living with a number of long term health conditions and a hidden disability. She is the main carer for a child with special education needs. She hopes to bring a patient perspective to the committee and make sure that research is relevant and important to patients, carers, and their families.
Joined November 2020, second term started 5th December 2022
Dr Hui Guo
Dr Hui Guo is Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics and Lead of the Centre for Biostatistics at The University of Manchester. Hui has been a Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute since 2018. Her research focuses on causal inference (in particular, Bayesian Mendelian randomization) and multimorbidity from observational studies. She is also interested in exploring biological causal pathways/networks of certain diseases by using large-scale multi-omics data.
Joined January 2021, first term, second term started 27th January 2023
Dr Koen Pouwels
Koen Pouwels is a senior researcher at the Health Economics Research Centre in the Nuffield Department of Population Health. He holds a PhD in pharmacoepidemiology and an MSc in Medical Pharmaceutical Sciences (University of Groningen). Having previously held posts at Public Health England (2015-2018), he came to Oxford in January 2019. His research focuses on causal inference, spatiotemporal modelling, infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, economic evaluations, and Bayesian statistics.
He has co-designed the national COVID-19 Infection Survey, a large longitudinal community survey, and has extensive experience with analysing large primary care and linked secondary and intensive care databases. His work has directly informed national policies in the UK and the Netherlands, ranging from COVID-19 mitigation measures, to decisions about vaccinations against various infectious diseases, as well as national targets for antibiotic prescribing in primary care.
Joined January 2021, first term, second term started 27th January 2023
Dr Kate Best
Kate Best is a senior research fellow based in the Academic Unit of Ageing and Stroke Research at the University of Leeds. Kate is a medical statistician interested in applying statistics to routinely collected health data in order to improve the health and social wellbeing of the population. She has experience developing and validating prognostic models using large linked primary, secondary and social care data. Previously, Kate was based at Newcastle University where she developed predictive models to estimate prevalence and survival of rare congenital conditions using linked population-based register data.
Joined March 2023
Manoj Mistry
A ‘family carer’ with over 35 years' experience; hence has extensive experience of dealing with NHS health professionals particularly GPs, pharmacists, and community mental health care staff. He has over 12 years experience of involvement in health education, training and research, a co-applicant on many research studies and has assisted in successfully obtaining funding on a number of occasions. He sits on 2 NHS England committees and 7 Health Education England Boards in London. He is a Public Reviewer for the N.I.H.R and sits on a Pre-Submission Panel for the Research Design Service (Northwest).
Joined April 2023
Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox (Chief Investigator for QResearch)
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
Joined Sept 2019
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
Joined Aug 2023