Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC) has awarded a chair to Dr John New, Consultant Physician in Diabetes and Obesity at Salford Royal. He is also the Chief Clinical Officer for NorthWest EHealth (NWEH) and the NWEH Clinical Director of the Salford Lung Study (SLS) and an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Prof New is co-author on the Royal College of Physicians’ guidance for the treatment of obesity and has presented at numerous national meetings about the effective treatments for weight loss in people with and without diabetes. Within Salford Royal he is involved in the insulin pump clinic and was appointed by the National Technology Appraisal Centre as one of two national specialists in insulin pump therapy.
He came to Salford as a lecturer in diabetes in 1996 and was appointed as a Consultant Physician in 1999. With Bob Young he developed a research interest in medical informatics. Initially, with Diabetes UK, he was funded to develop the National Diabetes Research Audit, which is now a national service chaired by DrYoung.
He helped develop the Salford Integrated Record, to replace manual entry of data from primary care into an electronic feed. This was so successful the service was rolled out to all long term conditions and then to the whole of Salford.
Realising the research potential of the integrated health record, North West EHealth (NWEH) was developed to explore how the health record could be used. While NWEH has had many successes, notable among them is the GSK-sponsored study, the Salford Lung Study, where Prof New led a small team that advised the study’s development.
This study joins many medical records to enable clinical studies to be performed where the safety monitoring and majority of endpoints are collected directly from the medical record. It means that many people can be involved in the study without the need for many trial visits. This is important as these visits change adherence to the treatment. The results of the study were announced by GSK in May.
The methodology has been widely hailed as a ‘game changer’ for clinical trials and NWEH is currently working with other partners to develop more studies ,throughout Greater Manchester, based upon the technological platform employed in the Salford Lung Study.