Project Management Group
Toby Richards – Chief Investigator
Mr Toby Richards is an academic Senior Lecturer at the University College London and practising Vascular Surgeon at University College Hospital. He has a strong interest in blood conservation developed from his time in training on the renal transplant unit at Oxford. He has explored the prevalence and effect of preoperative anaemia in surgical practise and the impact of preoperative anaemia on transfusion and patient outcomes following operation. This has been paralleled by prospective studies to assess the relationships of absolute and functional iron deficiency in surgical patients.
He has collaborations in several international audits to highlight the problem of peri-operative anaemia including analysis of 227,425 patients from the US Veterans NSQIP database showing anaemia had independent effect on outcome in patients undergoing elective surgery (Lancet 2011). As part of the Western Australia Patient Blood Management Team, implementation of a PBM programme has produced a year on year reduction of blood transfusion. In 2011 issuance of RBCs was 27.9 units per 1000 population, the lowest published figure in the developed world with a direct product saving of over $4.5 million.
Tim Clayton – Co-Investigator
Tim has worked at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) since completing his MSc in Medical Statistics in 1994 and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medical Statistics and on the management board of the LSHTM Clinical Trials Unit. His main area of research has been in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials with particular focus on cardiovascular disease, surgery and HIV. He has also been involved in a number of observational studies and most recently investigating the link between respiratory infection and (i) cardiovascular events (ii) venous thromboembolism.
Tim has been closely involved in teaching at LSHTM for a number of years and currently organises and teaches on courses in clinical trials and statistical methods used in epidemiological studies.
Rosey Knight – Senior Trial Manager
Rosey has worked both as a nurse and in a research environment specialising in cardiothoracics. She has worked at the school since 1997 and co-ordinated the RITA trials (Randomised Intervention Treatment of Angina). These multi centre studies compared established treatments for patients with stable and unstable angina.
Other work has included STEPS (Strategies for Trial Enrolment and Participation) which reviewed recruitment to Randomised Controlled Trials, OPAL (Older People and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids) which looked at the role of fish oils in older people and txt2stop which involved using mobile phones as an aid to quitting smoking.
She has involvement in pre conditioning trials which include REPAIR (Renal Protection Against Ischaemia Reperfusion in Transplantation), see: http://repair.lshtm.ac.uk/ and ERICCA see: http://ericca.lshtm.ac.uk/. Funding has also been obtained for the PREVENTT trial and REVIVED (comparison of treatments for patients with heart failure). The reputation of the accredited clinical trials unit continues to expand and collaboration requests continue to be sent. Currently there are a further three outline proposals awaiting funding decisions.
Steven Robertson – Senior Data Manager
Steve’s background is in Information Management and he has been working on randomised controlled trials since 1998 both at LSHTM and St George’s, University of London. During this time he has worked on the following trials: CESAR (adult ECMO), TMC (liver transplantation), INNOVO (neonatal respiratory disease), ACST (stroke), txt2stop (smoking cessation), REPAIR (pre conditioning in renal transplant patients), ERICCA (pre conditioning in CABG patients) and REVIVED (Revascularisation for Ischaemic Ventricular Dysfunction).
Laura Van Dyck – Trial/Data Manager
Laura has been working on randomised clinical trials since 1999. During this time she has worked at both the LSHTM CTU and the Medical Research Council CTU on a variety of multi centre trials. These include RITA-3 (unstable angina), FOCUS2 (colorectal cancer), ICON7 (ovarian cancer), STAMPEDE (prostate cancer) and CHiP (control of hyperglycaemia in PICUs).
Kimberley Potter – Assistant Trial Manager
Kimberley studied Psychology at Bangor University. She has been working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine since May 2016 as an Assistant Trial Manager for PREVENTT and safetxt. Previous to this, she worked across many NHS settings including the Trauma department in Royal London Hospital, and the Emergency department in Kings College Hospital.
Tim Collier – Trial Statistician
Tim Collier is a lecturer in medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He has a BSc in Mathematics and Environmental Management and an MSc in Medical Statistics. His main research interests are in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials (principally cardiovascular) and statistical computing.
Sandy Abeysiri – Research Fellow
Sandy is the research fellow currently involved in PREVENTT. She is in the process of undertaking an MD at UCL under Professor Richards. She is also a plastic surgery registrar with previous experience in medical education and an interest in iron deficiency and women’s health.
