Seven leading researchers – all experts covering a range of differing specialties – are to drive research forward at Salford Royal and Pennine Acute hospitals.
They have been appointed as Clinical Research Leads and will play key roles in increasing research activity, enhancing research performance and supporting colleagues to carry out high quality studies to benefit both the 1.3million people in the area covered by the Trusts and the wider 3.2 million population in Greater Manchester.
At Salford Royal, Professor Phil Kalra is the Principal Clinical Research Lead, with Professor Andy King and Dr David Rog as Senior Clinical Research Leads (pictured from left above).
Dr Jimmy Limdi and Dr Jason Raw are joint Principal Clinical Research Leads at Fairfield General Hospital and Rochdale Infirmary.
The Principal Clinical Research Leads for North Manchester General Hospital and The Royal Oldham Hospital are Dr Andy Ustianowski and Dr Georgios Antoniou respectively.
Together, the seven have many decades of experience of running high quality studies to improve patient treatment and care.
And because research is a shared directorate across Pennine Acute and Salford Royal, they will be able to share their expertise with up and coming researchers from all the care organisations.
Their specialties include kidney disease (Prof Kalra), neurosurgery (Prof King), vascular and endovascular surgery (Dr Antoniou), gastroenterology and inflammatory bowel disease (Dr Limdi), geriatric medicine and Parkinson’s disease (Dr Raw), neurology and multiple sclerosis (Dr Rog), and infectious diseases including HIV and viral hepatitis (Dr Ustianowski).
The Group’s Chief Medical Director Dr Chris Brookes said: “Research is essential to the NHS and helps us to improve treatments and patient care. I am delighted to welcome these distinguished clinicians to their new roles encouraging and supporting our workforce in making a real difference to patients’ lives.
“Our combined care organisations provide health services to 1.3million people in the immediate area and to many more who travel from further afield to access our specialist services. It’s important that we offer them the chance to take part in a wide range of studies and in the next year we expect to recruit around 9,000 patients to our research portfolio as well as supporting and contributing to Greater Manchester research through the new Health Innovation Manchester initiative.”