Biography

I am a professionally qualified manager and scientific photographer, with over 40 years of experience in medical research and the clinical healthcare environment; particularly related to eye complications associated with diabetes.
Since 1982 I have been centrally involved in the detection and assessment of diabetic retinopathy for clinical and research purposes, research design and management, ophthalmic retinal imaging and the qualification, education and professional development of staff within healthcare. I have many years of experience of developing and delivering core educational and CPD content related to retinopathy and imaging for a wide range of professional groups.
I was co-founder and ultimately Director and Principal Investigator for the internationally-acclaimed Retinopathy Grading Centre at Imperial College London at Hammersmith Hospital. I successfully attracted high-profile international studies for which we provided detection, assessment and classification of diabetic retinopathy. I have been fortunate to collaborate with the majority of recognised world leaders in this field for many years.
Finally leaving Imperial in 2008, I moved to Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust to help develop and deliver core aspects of the new NHS Diabetic Eye Screening Programme, to lead various educational and qualification aspects (including a 5-year period as National Education Lead for NDESP) and to lead in developing clinical retinal research for our NHS Trust.
I directly manage a small team providing a number of professional qualifications within and outside the UK. I am Senior Tutor for the Certificate of Higher Education in Diabetic Retinopathy Screening and a Module Tutor for the Foundation Degree in OCT, both awarded by the University of Gloucestershire. Our latest venture with the University is developing a ‘Degree through Apprenticeship’ in Ophthalmic Imaging, as the first workstream of the new Healthcare Science Degree.
I also continue to manage an expanding research portfolio of the Gloucestershire Retinal Research Group of our NHS Trust. We have a current portfolio of over 15 clinical research trials and academic research projects. I project managed a number of these trials and was Principal Investigator for our retinopathy assessment (grading) studies. I was until very recently a member of the Trust's R & D Senior Management Team, 100 Leaders Group and was initiator and convener of the Trust's Innovation and Commercialisation Forum.
I have WoS and Scholar Google h-index scores of 29 and 33 respectively (Researcher ID: G-7828-2012, ORCID-ID: 0000-0003-1808-3580, Scopus Author ID: 6603763721), i10-index of 53, RG Score of 37 with almost 50,000 citations from over 70 publications (including group publications), with over 1000 citations/year constantly since 2003.