I am very grateful to have been awarded an NIHR Advanced Fellowship, with the support of King’s College London. By working closely with NICE, I aim to create an approach that can be scaled and adapted for multiple diseases, ultimately improving health outcomes nationwide.
Dr Mark Russell, Clinical Lecturer in Rheumatology at King's
28 August 2025
Dr Mark Russell awarded NIHR Advanced Fellowship to improve guideline implementation using big data
Dr Mark Russell, Clinical Lecturer in Rheumatology in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences at King’s College London, has been awarded an Advanced Fellowship from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
The Fellowship award of £1.36 million over five years will support his GuideALIGN study, which aims to transform how the NHS evaluates and improves adherence to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) clinical guidelines.
Clinical guidelines set out evidence-based recommendations on diagnosing and treating medical conditions, but there is currently no easy way to monitor whether these recommendations are being followed in real-world care. Existing methods, such as manual data collection using spreadsheets, are slow and limited, making it difficult to build a national picture of care quality.
Dr Russell’s project will use the OpenSAFELY platform, which securely links anonymised GP and hospital records for the entire population of England, to enable rapid, accurate monitoring without manual data entry.
The initial focus of the project will be on gout, a common but under-treated type of arthritis affecting around one in 40 adults in the UK. If not managed well, gout can cause severe pain, permanent joint damage, and other health complications such as kidney disease. Although effective medications exist, they are often prescribed too late or in insufficient doses.
Dr Russell will analyse anonymised health data for 58 million people in the UK to evaluate how closely current care for gout aligns with NICE recommendations. This will highlight geographical variations in care, reveal factors influencing treatment quality, and assess the impact of care on patient outcomes.
Using these findings, Dr Russell will work with patients, healthcare professionals, charities and policymakers to design a targeted plan for the management of gout that encourages guideline-recommended care. The plan will combine digital tools with education to make it practical and scalable.
The plan will then be evaluated in a real-world, data-enabled study involving 38 general practices to see whether guideline-recommended care can improve outcomes for patients with gout compared to standard care. All data will be captured automatically via OpenSAFELY, requiring no additional input from patients or clinicians.
By addressing a common condition with proven treatments, the GuideALIGN study aims to deliver direct benefits for people with gout and help clinicians provide better care. The approach will also be designed so it can be adapted for other long-term conditions, with the aim of improving health outcomes on a national scale.
The project is due to begin in September 2025. More information about the NIHR Career Development Awards is available on the NIHR website.
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NIHR Advanced Fellow