Salford Royal Parkinson’s disease expert Dr Monty Silverdale has been named Greater Manchester’s Investigator of the Year at the prestigious 2019 NIHR Greater Manchester Clinical Research Awards.
Consultant Neurologist Dr Silverdale (pictured) is leading some of the most exciting and promising Parkinson’s disease research that is going on globally.
He is lead neurologist on the ‘scent of Parkinson’s’ study using skin chemicals as a novel way to diagnose Parkinson’s disease and is an expert on pain in Parkinson’s, a less well known but highly debilitating consequence of the condition.
He is also the CRN specialty lead for dementias and neurodegeneration, lead neurologist on the Greater Manchester Deep Brain Stimulation Programme, and Chair of the UK Parkinson’s disease Clinical Studies group, which organises Parkinson’s disease research throughout the UK.
There was also a special award for outstanding patient recruitment for the PAT-POPS team who recruited more than 44,000 children and young people. The team, led by Professor Andrew Rowland, worked across the A&E and Emergency departments at the Royal Oldham, Fairfield General and North Manchester General Hospitals and Rochdale Infirmary. The information they gathered will now be used to help develop guidelines advising clinicians which children and young people aged 0-16 should be admitted to hospital and which could be discharged home or signposted to a different service.
And our colleagues Research for the Future, who are based at Salford Royal, were awarded the best public engagement contribution for their work with artist Christine Wilcox-Baker to highlight the risk of foot amputations because of complications of diabetes.
The awards, now in their seventh year, are hosted by the NIHR Greater Manchester Clinical Research Network.
This year saw more than 200 nominations highlighting the hard work of teams across the region to deliver research which improves both patients’ health and NHS services.
Altogether, the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group had 10 teams and individuals shortlisted for the awards – every single one that was shortlisted or indeed nominated does so much to improve patient care through research. You can read more about who they are and their work here.