PCCS SPRING CONFERENCE 2021 'CURRENT CONVERSATIONS IN CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE' - SPEAKERS

Professor Michael Norton is a Consultant Community Cardiologist and Visiting Professor of Community Cardiology based in the North East of England. Michael runs the Dept. of Community Cardiology in Sunderland. He is also the Deputy Medical Director of the North East Ambulance Service and is clinically active in pre-hospital emergency medicine. Michael has significant experience in syncope and related disorders having worked for over eighteen years (six as head of Department) within the Falls & Syncope Service at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary. Michael’s main clinical and research interests are cardiovascular risk reduction, neuro-cardiovascular syncope and cardiac arrest. He is a director and national council member of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society. He is also the co-founder of Cardioproof, a community interest company, which aims to improve survival from cardiac arrest by increasing bystander CPR and use of public access defibrillators.

Dr Moore studied medicine in Edinburgh before moving to Gloucestershire to work as a GP principal. He has an interest in cardiology and cardiovascular disease, particularly those aspects that are relevant to primary care and contributes regularly to related educational events across the UK. He is President of the primary care cardiovascular society.

Dr Moore was involved in the development of the Primary Care based Gloucestershire Heart Failure service where he continues to work as a GPwSI.

He continues to represent Primary Care in the cardiovascular area at both a local and national level. He has provided cardiovascular clinical support to local commissioning organisations for over ten years and remains actively involved in commissioning local cardiology services chairing the Circulatory Clinical Programme Group for Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). He was Clinical Lead for the community based West of England AHSN Stroke Prevention in AF project: Don’t wait to anticoagulate.

Dr Moore previously served on the board of the British Society for Heart Failure and was a member of the NICE Chronic Heart Failure Guideline committee (2018). He currently sits on the National Heart Failure Audit Steering group.

Sarah trained at Cambridge and Oxford universities and became a partner in an inner-city general practice in 1990. She was a GP trainer for 25 years until 2017. She is an active medical writer and broadcaster and is the resident doctor for BBC Radio 2 and the One Show on BBC One. She also appears regularly on UK television and radio programmes including Channel 5, Good Morning Britain, ITN Lunchtime News, LBC and Radio 5 live. In 2017 she became clinical director of the website Patient.info, which provides patient health education to over 120 million people a year worldwide. She oversees all the clinical content of this site. Sarah is past chair of the Health Care Committee of HEART UK, the cholesterol charity, and is a member of the advisory board for the British Journal of Cardiology. She is also past Chair of the Women’s Taskforce at the RCGP and Women’s Health Spokesperson for the RCGP. She has also authored Diabetes for Dummies (now in its third edition), Pregnancy for Dummies, Children's Health for Dummies, Women's Health for Life and The Welcome Visitor, a book on the ethics of dying co-authored with the broadcaster John Humphrys. Sarah was appointed an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the New Year’s Honours list in December 2017 for services to public understanding of health and general practice. In 2021, Sarah was appointed as visiting Professor of General Practice, University of Huddersfield.

Martin Cowie is Professor of Cardiology and Chair of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. He is an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, where he leads the heart failure service, and a Non-Executive Director of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Professor Cowie's research interests focus on health technology assessment and delivery of efficient and effective care for patients with heart failure, with a particular focus on diagnostics, drugs, or devices. He has had a longstanding interest in evaluating remote monitoring and now digital technologies in heart failure. Professor Cowie is a founding member and past-Chairman of the British Society for Heart Failure, in addition to being a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). He chairs the Digital Health Committee of the ESC, and was responsible for organizing the first European Society of Cardiology Digital Summit in October 2019 in Tallinn. Professor Cowie was shortlisted for the NHS Digital Champion (Leadership) Award in England in 2017, was awarded the Thomas Lewis Medal for services to British Cardiology in 2019, and was the recipient of the Roy Award from the UK Heart Failure Patient Charity, Pumping Marvellous in 2019 for outstanding contribution to excellence in heart failure.

Professor Ahmet Fuat has been a GP in Darlington, Co.Durham for 33 years. He has been a GPSI Cardiology for 20 years having undertaken a Postgraduate Diploma in Cardiol-ogy at Bradford University graduating with distinction. He started the first one stop diagnostic and integrated heart failure clinic in the UK in 17 years ago with local colleagues. His PhD by research in heart failure diagnosis and management including work on natriuretic pep-tides generated several publications that have informed guidelines and led to the award of an Hon-orary Professorial Chair at Durham University.

He holds various roles in CVD and research including the Past President of the new Primary Care Cardiovascular Society (PCCS) which he was instrumental in reforming, CVD Clinical Adviser to the RCGP, CVD and Research Leads for Darlington Primary Care Network (PCN) and Federation, As-sociate Lead for Industry Research at North East and North Cumbria NIHR CRN. He has recently been elected onto the newly formed Darlington PCN Governing body as a GP member, CVD, Research Leads and Chair.

He has a passion for medical education and remains an active lecturer, tutor and researcher. He is on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Cardiology and Primary Care Cardiovascular Jour-nals and a peer reviewer for most high impact Cardiovascular journals and research bodies. His work in community cardiology has been recognised with Fellowships from the RCGP, RCP London and RCP Edinburgh.

Mrs Carys Barton is a Heart failure Nurse Consultant at Imperial College Healthcare Trust in London. She presently serves as the Current Chair British Society for Heart failure Nurse forum and as such is a coopted British Society for Heart failure board member. Prior to this she was Deputy Chair British Society for Heart failure nurse forum 2018-20 and board observer 2017 -2019. Other positions Mrs Barton currently holds are vice chair of the Pan London Heart Failure Steering Committee and committee member of the British Geriatric Society Cardiovascular Special Interest Group. She is an experienced heart failure and Cardiology specialist nurse that has worked in several specialist areas from the first “grown up congenital heart disease” unit, to cardiac catheter labs and everything in between! She has worked as a Senior Cardiology Nurse in many specialist centres since 1990 undertaking her very first Cardiac specialist nurse training in 1994 between Royal Brompton and London Chest Hospitals. She has a special interest in supportive Palliative Care in Heart Failure. Mrs Barton is committed to supporting the education and further development of Heart failure specialist Nurses and their services, through the nurse forum but also as an honorary lecturer of heart failure masters modules at Glasgow Caledonian University and Keele University. She is a keen supporter of heart failure patient charities. Her goal is to ensure equitable, consistent and excellent standards of care for people living with heart failure.

Dr Shahed Ahmad is the National Clinical Director for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention for NHS England and Improvement and Medical Director System Improvement and Professional Standards in the South East Region. As such he is the Responsible Officer for about 3,000 GPs in the Hampshire Thames Valley area.

Shahed did his undergraduate studies at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and his clinicals at University College and Middlesex School of Medicine, London. He did his Public Health Masters at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and leadership training at the London Business School.

He has had a strong passion for improving life expectancy and reducing health inequalities, designing and delivering evidence-based strategies to improve life expectancy and reduce health inequalities. Since 2016 he has been a Medical Director in NHSE. He had the pleasure of leading the NHS@2030 leadership development programme for GPs in South Central, the alumni of which have gone on and delivered fantastic health leadership. His current responsibilities include minimising BAME deaths from Covid in the South East.

Beverley is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in general practice in Gloucestershire and a PCN Nurse Coordinator in Hereford. She is also Editor in Chief of Practice Nurse journal. She qualified as an RGN at St George’s Hospital London and gained a BSc in Professional Nursing Studies after completing 2 years of an advanced clinical practice MSc at Wolverhampton University. She is an Independent Nurse Prescriber and holds an MSc in Respiratory Care and an MA in Medical Ethics and Law.

Beverley’s other qualifications include a Post Graduate Award in Diabetes Therapeutics from Warwick University.

Beverley has extensive educational experience developing modules in diabetes and CVD for an Open University-affiliated organisation and is an Expert Witness for a clinical negligence company. She has been a Queen’s Nurse since 2015, a title which is given to nurses who have demonstrated a high level of commitment to patient care and nursing practice.

Beverley is a council member for the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society and has worked on the Implementation Steering Group of Public Health England’s CVDPREVENT project and Oxford AHSN’s ‘Prevention of CVD during the pandemic’ guidance. She has also been a Visiting Lecturer in behaviour change at Imperial College London for the MSc in Preventive Cardiology.

Helen is the National Speciality Adviser for CVD Prevention at NHS England and is working on delivery of the national CVD ambitions for AF, Blood Pressure and Cholesterol in the NHS Long Term Plan. Helen has worked as a CVD specialist for more than 25 years across all care settings. She was clinical adviser to the national AF programme and developed the pharmacist-led virtual clinic model to optimise uptake of anticoagulation in AF, which has now been spread nationally. Helen has recently been appointed as one of the long term conditions lead for South East London Integrated Care System and is also working at UCLPartners on the implementation of proactive care frameworks for long-term conditions to support primary care in the post COVID-19 environment.

Dr Dermot Neely is former Head of the Lipid Clinic, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle and Director of Supra-Regional Assay Services for Lipids and Cardiovascular Biomarkers in the Integrated Laboratory Medicine Directorate, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He was an expert adviser on the NICE Lipid Modification Guidelines in 2008 (CG67) and member of the Guideline Development Group for the CG181 guideline in 2012–14. Now retired from clinical practice, he is currently Specialist Adviser on Lipids to the Academic Health Sciences Network for North East and North Cumbria, a member of the AAC Rapid Uptake Products Working Group on PCSK9 inhibitors and sits on the NHSE Specialist Advisory Group on Familial Hypercholesterolaemia. Dr Neely is a founder Trustee of HEART UK and co-chair of the HEART UK Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Intelligence Network (FHIN).

Graduated from Birmingham and completed foundation years in the North West., where I undertook a cardiology house job. Moved to Worcestershire to undertake GP training. Since 2015 I have been working at the local hospital in the cardiology department. Throughout this time, I have been heavily involved at primary care level in the improvement of cardiovascular disease monitoring and treatment, especially the use of anticoagulation and detection of AF.

I am lead for IHD, AF and heart failure within the practice, but also CVD lead in the PCN. I am currently a CVD Clinical Advisor for the local AHSN with the aim of improving outcomes for cardiovascular disease in the region. I also run local education sessions in cardiovascular disease.

Dr Matt Fay is a General Practitioner who joined Westcliffe Medical Practice in 1999. This has developed into the Affinity Care, a 27 partner “superpractice” based in Bradford managing 8 GP contracts and providing care for over 64,000 population.

Matt is the Clinical Chair of the partnership and the clinical director of Affinity Care PCN, but still does regular GP sessions at The Willows in Queensbury. In 2001 Matthew established a GPwSI cardiology service in Bradford which has expanded to provide direct access investigations and e-consultations.

He was a member of the NICE AF Guideline Development Group and was a standing committee member of the NICE Quality Standard Advisory Committee. He is currently a clinical advisor to the AF Association, STARS (the Syncope Trust), Arrhythmia Alliance, on the Expert Advisory Panel for the Stroke Association and on the faculty for Heart Valve Voice. He is a Trustee of the AF Association and Thrombosis UK. He has been involved in service redesign of cardiovascular services with a focus on AF, dysrhythmia and moving services out of hospital for many years. He was the clinical lead of the redesign of the Bradford VTE services to make it completely community and NOAC based.

He has previously worked in Bradford’s PCTs and CCG. As a father of four he insists that he is first and foremost a family doctor.

Prof Derek Connolly is a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Birmingham City Hospital, Birmingham UK.

He trained in Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and San Diego where he was a Carnegie Scholar. He has a first class degree in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh where he was the Brunton medallist and Keasbey Bursary holder. His PhD in molecular cardiology is from the University of Cambridge.

He is the Chief or Primary Investigator of multiple large trials in Cardiovascular medicine.

He developed one of the UKs first primary angioplasty programmes, and one of the UKs largest cardiac CT programmes.

Terry McCormack is a GP in Whitby, North Yorkshire, Professor of Primary Care Cardiovascular Medicine at Hull York Medical School (HYMS) and President of the British and Irish Hypertension Society. He is a primary care researcher, particularly interested in hypertension, lipids and anticoagulation.

In 2020 he was the winner of the HYMS Undergraduate Medicine Phase II and III Teacher of Excellence Award. Guideline work includes the NICE Hypertension, Perioperative Care and Venous Thromboembolism guideline committees and the AAGBI/BHS preoperative BP guideline. He is an editor of the British Journal of Cardiology and a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology

Professor of Thrombosis & Haemostasis at King’s College London; Consultant in the Thrombosis & Haemophilia Centre at Guy’s & St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust; and Clinical Lead in Haematological Sciences at Viapath LLP. Professor Beverley Hunt is founder & Medical Director of Thrombosis UK and chair of the Steering group of World Thrombosis Day. She was awarded an OBE on the Queen’s birthday honours list in 2019 for services to medicine. In the COVID-19 pandemic, she has become an international expert on thrombosis and coagulopathy in COVID-19 patients, and has given over 60 webinars including being an expert witness for the British House of Lords Science and Technology Committee. She has also given numerous media interviews including working with BBC News. She sits on the World Health Organisation and NICE guideline development groups producing living COVID-19 guidelines, and is also a member of multiple national and international COVID-19 research and advisory groups.