The Medicines Use Research Group provides expertise on the evaluation, optimisation and risk associated with medicines. Its translational research directs prescribing practice and pharmaceutical care in order to benefit patients. It includes the Centre for Adherence Research & Education and is how King’s Health Partners clinical academic pharmacists link into the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science. Bringing together academics, clinicians and students across KHP it focuses on:
- Non-adherence to medicines
- Medication-related harm, frailty and ageing
- Pharmaceutical formulations and care in paediatrics
- Optimal dosing, safety and use of anticoagulants where uncertainty exists
- Psychotropic drugs in the treatment of mental illness
Clinical Academics
Professors:
David Taylor is Director of Pharmacy and Pathology at the Maudsley Hospital and Professor of Psychopharmacology at King's. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology (IF 5.0). David was a member of the UK Department of Transport expert panel that introduced drug-driving regulation. He is currently a member of the UK government’s Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs. Professor Taylor has been the lead author of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines since their inception in 1993. The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines have sold over 300,000 copies in fourteen editions and twelve languages. David has also authored over 375 clinical papers. He has an H Index of 69.
Ben Forbes is Professor of Pharmaceutics and Head of Institute of Pharmaceutical Science and joint Head of School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Science. Ben’s research interests are: (1) inhaled medicine formulation, (2) the development and application of techniques to study respiratory drug transport and metabolism, (3) inhalation toxicology. He is a registered pharmacist and Science Chair of the annual Drug Delivery to the Lungs conference of the Aerosol Society.
John Weinman is Professor of Psychology applied to Medicines and Director of the Centre for Adherence Research & Education. His research focuses on factors influencing patient self-management, and on improving adherence to treatment. Prof Weinman has been instrumental in developing Health Psychology within the UK and Europe and was founding editor of Psychology & Health: an international journal. Weinman has visiting professorships in UCL, Denmark and Ireland, and was awarded a lifetime achievement award and Honorary Fellowship by the British Psychological Society. He is a Fellow of the European Health Psychology Society, American Academy of Behavioural Medicine Research, and Academy of Social Sciences.
Clinical Readers:
Dr Alice Oborne has been the consultant pharmacist for safe medication practice at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust since 2008 and is the medication safety officer. She is also co-chair of the trust’s Medication Safety Committee and works clinically with older inpatients. She is a clinical reader in medicines safety in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London. Published research includes medication safety in hospital and in community pharmacy, safety cultures, medicines information and patient safety, and prescribing in older patients. Within the ‘Sign up for Safety’ initiative and South London Health Innovation Network Alice focuses on medication safety at transfer. Dr Oborne completed her PhD at King’s College School of Medicine & Dentistry, London in 2003 in indicators to enhance appropriate prescribing for elderly patients. Before this she completed a postgraduate MSc in Clinical Pharmacy at UCL School of Pharmacy, London.
Catherine McKenzie is a Clinical Academic and Academic Lead at King's College Hospital. Cathy is pharmacy academic lead for Kings College Hospital (KCH). Her research is in sedation, delirium and pharmacokinetics. She intends to assess the efficacy of parenteral thiamine in critical delirium and conduct a population based pharmacokinetics of aminoglcyosides.
Senior Clinical Lecturers:
Delia Bishara is a Consultant Pharmacist for the Mental Health of Older Adults and Dementia, South London and Maudsley Hospital. Her role involves the development of clinical guidelines for the pharmacological management of dementia and she has a significant input in teaching and training on medication use in dementia. She is also greatly involved in research, mainly relating to safe prescribing in dementia in which she is currently undertaking a PhD. Over the last 10 years, she has regularly updated the older adult sections of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines.
Eromona Whiskey is a Pharmacist and Clinical Lecturer at South London & Maudsley Hospital. Dr Whiskey is a Specialist Clinical and Research pharmacist with expertise in psychopharmacology of treatment refractory schizophrenia. He works within a multidisciplinary team at the National Psychosis Service, a tertiary referral unit of the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation. He teaches part of the psychopharmacology modules and supervises MPharm projects.
Gillian Cavell is a Medication Safety Pharmacist. Gillian’s experience has been as a hospital clinical pharmacist with a special interest in medication safety. She worked as Consultant Pharmacist, Medication Safety at King’s College Hospital until December 2017. Gillian has worked on projects and publications for the Department of Health and the National Patient Safety Agency/NHS England to raise awareness of medication safety issues nationally. She has presented at national and international conferences on a variety of topics to promote safe use of medicines.
Grainne D'ancona is a Consultant Pharmacist for respiratory and sleep medicine at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and clinical lecturer at King's College London. Her clinical expertise is optimising care for patients with respiratory disease and her main academic interest is in medicines adherence and its impact on clinical outcome.
Jennifer Stevenson is an Honorary Senior Lecturer and Clinical Pharmacist specialising in the optimisation of medicines in older adults. Her research, more specifically, focuses on advancing our understanding of medication-related harm in older adults living with frailty, and explores how to identify those at greatest risk of harm especially at the transition of care. Her clinical speciality, as a pharmacist at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, is older adults where she works as an Integrated Care Pharmacist and is a key contributor to the NHS England London Frailty Network Education and Training workstream. She also supports teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate Pharmacy programmes.
Nicola Husain is a Paediatric Academic Link Pharmacist. Nicola works clinically at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and leads on clinical postgraduate pharmacy programmes at King’s College London, including the Clinically Enhanced Pharmacist Independent Prescribing programme and the KHP International Paediatric Pharmaceutical Care masterclass and internship programme.
Sian Gaze is a Highly Specialist Paediatric Pharmacist at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Sian has supervised a number of MPharm 4 pharmacy undergraduate projects at King’s College London, and has presented the results at national paediatric pharmacy conferences. Her specialist areas of practice are neonatology and paediatric palliative care.
Siobhan Gee is the principal pharmacist for psychiatric liaison at South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her clinical expertise is in the use of psychotropic medication in patients with comorbid physical illness, and her academic research focusses on prescribing patterns and outcomes in treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
Virginia Aguado is a Medication Safety Pharmacist specialised in safe use of injectable medicines at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. With a background as a hospital pharmacist including working in Pharmacy Aseptic Services and Manufacturing, she has been dedicated to safety of injectable medicines for over 10 years, focusing on three main areas of responsibility: risk assessment of injectable medicine products and practice, standardisation and supply of injectable medicines ready-to-use, and guidance on administration of injectables.
John Minshull
John Minshull is the Professional Lead for Medicines Information for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and for NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service. He has over fifteen years of experience as a pharmacist, predominately focussing on evidence-based and cost-effective use of medicines. He has a particular interest in the managed uptake of new medicines, and careful balancing of patient need, financial viability and clinical governance. John supports teaching and research on the KCL MPharm programme.
Dr Mandy Wan is a paediatric pharmacist at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on examining and improving medicine use in children. She was awarded a HEE-NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship in 2017. Her thesis focused on using big data to understand vitamin D prescribing practices in children, and applied population pharmacokinetic modelling to inform vitamin D dosing in children with chronic kidney disease. As the NIHR Clinical Research Network Specialty Pharmacist Lead for Children and Young People, her work involves developing and delivering national and international collaborative paediatric clinical trials across a range of different clinical specialities.
Haifa Lyster
Haifa Lyster is a consultant pharmacist for Cardiothoracic Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support at Harefield hospital, part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. She has worked in thoracic transplantation & Mechanical Circulatory Support (MCS) since 1998 with a leading role in managing MCS and heart and lung transplant patients in all aspects of their pharmaceutical care, particularly in anticoagulation, anti-infective and immunosuppression regimens. She is currently undertaking a PhD research doctorate developing PK/PD models of several antifungal agents in adult ECMO patients.
Lynda Cameron
Lynda Cameron is a critical care pharmacist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and an honorary senior lecturer at King’s College London. In her clinical role, she provides expert pharmaceutical care to critically ill patients, optimising the prescribing and use of medicines for patients with dynamic organ (dys)function. She also leads on governance and education for the critical care pharmacy team. This includes education of both professionals, and undergraduates studying pharmacy and medicine, with a particular focus on teaching safe prescribing. Her research interests mainly focus on micronutrients in critical illness: vitamin D was the subject of her MRes in 2018; and prescribing and medication safety especially at care interfaces.
Clinical Lecturers:
Petrina Douglas-Hall is a Mental Health Pharmacist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Petrina manages the National Centre for Psychiatric Medicines Information. She has worked on autism and learning disability wards and is currently the ward pharmacist for an older adult ward. She is an independent prescriber currently working in an ADHD children’s clinic.
Ian Osborne
Ian Osborne is a Senior Pharmacist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at King's Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Ian has experience across a wide range of psychiatric specialties. His research interest is the treatment of psychosis and works for the National Psychosis Unit.
Sital Shah
Sital Shah is currently the Hepatology Pharmacy Team Leader at King's College Hospital. As an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Kings College London, she delivers a series of hepatology lectures to Pharmacy undergraduates. Shah is currently undertaking a research project in autoimmune liver disease as part of her MSc with King's.
Chris Remmington
Chris Remmington is an expert pharmacist in critical care at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. He is the lead pharmacist for research, quality improvement and audit and acts a supervisor and lead coordinator of projects for MPHARM 4 students at King’s College London. He is also the lead pharmacist for ECMO services and chairs the national pharmacist ECMO group. His research interests include sedation use in critical care and the use of steroids in severe acute respiratory failure.
Clinical Academics
Professors:
David Taylor is Director of Pharmacy and Pathology at the Maudsley Hospital and Professor of Psychopharmacology at King's. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology (IF 5.0). David was a member of the UK Department of Transport expert panel that introduced drug-driving regulation. He is currently a member of the UK government’s Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs. Professor Taylor has been the lead author of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines since their inception in 1993. The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines have sold over 300,000 copies in fourteen editions and twelve languages. David has also authored over 375 clinical papers. He has an H Index of 69.
Ben Forbes is Professor of Pharmaceutics and Head of Institute of Pharmaceutical Science and joint Head of School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Science. Ben’s research interests are: (1) inhaled medicine formulation, (2) the development and application of techniques to study respiratory drug transport and metabolism, (3) inhalation toxicology. He is a registered pharmacist and Science Chair of the annual Drug Delivery to the Lungs conference of the Aerosol Society.
John Weinman is Professor of Psychology applied to Medicines and Director of the Centre for Adherence Research & Education. His research focuses on factors influencing patient self-management, and on improving adherence to treatment. Prof Weinman has been instrumental in developing Health Psychology within the UK and Europe and was founding editor of Psychology & Health: an international journal. Weinman has visiting professorships in UCL, Denmark and Ireland, and was awarded a lifetime achievement award and Honorary Fellowship by the British Psychological Society. He is a Fellow of the European Health Psychology Society, American Academy of Behavioural Medicine Research, and Academy of Social Sciences.
Clinical Readers:
Dr Alice Oborne has been the consultant pharmacist for safe medication practice at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust since 2008 and is the medication safety officer. She is also co-chair of the trust’s Medication Safety Committee and works clinically with older inpatients. She is a clinical reader in medicines safety in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London. Published research includes medication safety in hospital and in community pharmacy, safety cultures, medicines information and patient safety, and prescribing in older patients. Within the ‘Sign up for Safety’ initiative and South London Health Innovation Network Alice focuses on medication safety at transfer. Dr Oborne completed her PhD at King’s College School of Medicine & Dentistry, London in 2003 in indicators to enhance appropriate prescribing for elderly patients. Before this she completed a postgraduate MSc in Clinical Pharmacy at UCL School of Pharmacy, London.
Catherine McKenzie is a Clinical Academic and Academic Lead at King's College Hospital. Cathy is pharmacy academic lead for Kings College Hospital (KCH). Her research is in sedation, delirium and pharmacokinetics. She intends to assess the efficacy of parenteral thiamine in critical delirium and conduct a population based pharmacokinetics of aminoglcyosides.
Senior Clinical Lecturers:
Delia Bishara is a Consultant Pharmacist for the Mental Health of Older Adults and Dementia, South London and Maudsley Hospital. Her role involves the development of clinical guidelines for the pharmacological management of dementia and she has a significant input in teaching and training on medication use in dementia. She is also greatly involved in research, mainly relating to safe prescribing in dementia in which she is currently undertaking a PhD. Over the last 10 years, she has regularly updated the older adult sections of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines.
Eromona Whiskey is a Pharmacist and Clinical Lecturer at South London & Maudsley Hospital. Dr Whiskey is a Specialist Clinical and Research pharmacist with expertise in psychopharmacology of treatment refractory schizophrenia. He works within a multidisciplinary team at the National Psychosis Service, a tertiary referral unit of the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation. He teaches part of the psychopharmacology modules and supervises MPharm projects.
Gillian Cavell is a Medication Safety Pharmacist. Gillian’s experience has been as a hospital clinical pharmacist with a special interest in medication safety. She worked as Consultant Pharmacist, Medication Safety at King’s College Hospital until December 2017. Gillian has worked on projects and publications for the Department of Health and the National Patient Safety Agency/NHS England to raise awareness of medication safety issues nationally. She has presented at national and international conferences on a variety of topics to promote safe use of medicines.
Grainne D'ancona is a Consultant Pharmacist for respiratory and sleep medicine at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and clinical lecturer at King's College London. Her clinical expertise is optimising care for patients with respiratory disease and her main academic interest is in medicines adherence and its impact on clinical outcome.
Jennifer Stevenson is an Honorary Senior Lecturer and Clinical Pharmacist specialising in the optimisation of medicines in older adults. Her research, more specifically, focuses on advancing our understanding of medication-related harm in older adults living with frailty, and explores how to identify those at greatest risk of harm especially at the transition of care. Her clinical speciality, as a pharmacist at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, is older adults where she works as an Integrated Care Pharmacist and is a key contributor to the NHS England London Frailty Network Education and Training workstream. She also supports teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate Pharmacy programmes.
Nicola Husain is a Paediatric Academic Link Pharmacist. Nicola works clinically at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital and leads on clinical postgraduate pharmacy programmes at King’s College London, including the Clinically Enhanced Pharmacist Independent Prescribing programme and the KHP International Paediatric Pharmaceutical Care masterclass and internship programme.
Sian Gaze is a Highly Specialist Paediatric Pharmacist at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Sian has supervised a number of MPharm 4 pharmacy undergraduate projects at King’s College London, and has presented the results at national paediatric pharmacy conferences. Her specialist areas of practice are neonatology and paediatric palliative care.
Siobhan Gee is the principal pharmacist for psychiatric liaison at South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her clinical expertise is in the use of psychotropic medication in patients with comorbid physical illness, and her academic research focusses on prescribing patterns and outcomes in treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
Virginia Aguado is a Medication Safety Pharmacist specialised in safe use of injectable medicines at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. With a background as a hospital pharmacist including working in Pharmacy Aseptic Services and Manufacturing, she has been dedicated to safety of injectable medicines for over 10 years, focusing on three main areas of responsibility: risk assessment of injectable medicine products and practice, standardisation and supply of injectable medicines ready-to-use, and guidance on administration of injectables.
John Minshull
John Minshull is the Professional Lead for Medicines Information for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and for NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service. He has over fifteen years of experience as a pharmacist, predominately focussing on evidence-based and cost-effective use of medicines. He has a particular interest in the managed uptake of new medicines, and careful balancing of patient need, financial viability and clinical governance. John supports teaching and research on the KCL MPharm programme.
Dr Mandy Wan is a paediatric pharmacist at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on examining and improving medicine use in children. She was awarded a HEE-NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship in 2017. Her thesis focused on using big data to understand vitamin D prescribing practices in children, and applied population pharmacokinetic modelling to inform vitamin D dosing in children with chronic kidney disease. As the NIHR Clinical Research Network Specialty Pharmacist Lead for Children and Young People, her work involves developing and delivering national and international collaborative paediatric clinical trials across a range of different clinical specialities.
Haifa Lyster
Haifa Lyster is a consultant pharmacist for Cardiothoracic Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support at Harefield hospital, part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. She has worked in thoracic transplantation & Mechanical Circulatory Support (MCS) since 1998 with a leading role in managing MCS and heart and lung transplant patients in all aspects of their pharmaceutical care, particularly in anticoagulation, anti-infective and immunosuppression regimens. She is currently undertaking a PhD research doctorate developing PK/PD models of several antifungal agents in adult ECMO patients.
Lynda Cameron
Lynda Cameron is a critical care pharmacist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and an honorary senior lecturer at King’s College London. In her clinical role, she provides expert pharmaceutical care to critically ill patients, optimising the prescribing and use of medicines for patients with dynamic organ (dys)function. She also leads on governance and education for the critical care pharmacy team. This includes education of both professionals, and undergraduates studying pharmacy and medicine, with a particular focus on teaching safe prescribing. Her research interests mainly focus on micronutrients in critical illness: vitamin D was the subject of her MRes in 2018; and prescribing and medication safety especially at care interfaces.
Clinical Lecturers:
Petrina Douglas-Hall is a Mental Health Pharmacist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Petrina manages the National Centre for Psychiatric Medicines Information. She has worked on autism and learning disability wards and is currently the ward pharmacist for an older adult ward. She is an independent prescriber currently working in an ADHD children’s clinic.
Ian Osborne
Ian Osborne is a Senior Pharmacist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at King's Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Ian has experience across a wide range of psychiatric specialties. His research interest is the treatment of psychosis and works for the National Psychosis Unit.
Sital Shah
Sital Shah is currently the Hepatology Pharmacy Team Leader at King's College Hospital. As an Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Kings College London, she delivers a series of hepatology lectures to Pharmacy undergraduates. Shah is currently undertaking a research project in autoimmune liver disease as part of her MSc with King's.
Chris Remmington
Chris Remmington is an expert pharmacist in critical care at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. He is the lead pharmacist for research, quality improvement and audit and acts a supervisor and lead coordinator of projects for MPHARM 4 students at King’s College London. He is also the lead pharmacist for ECMO services and chairs the national pharmacist ECMO group. His research interests include sedation use in critical care and the use of steroids in severe acute respiratory failure.
Group lead
Jignesh Patel
Reader and Honorary Consultant Pharmacist in Anticoagulation