Samantha joined NHS Lothian in October 2019 as Innovation Project Team Manager and was responsible for setting up the South East Regional Innovation Test Bed office team, Health Innovation South East Scotland (HISES). The HISES team provide a key support function for the delivery of transformational innovative change within the three NHS Boards (Borders, Fife, and Lothian), whilst also contributing to the spread of healthcare innovation across NHS Scotland.
Taking up the post of Senior Innovation Programme Manager in March 2023, Samantha provides leadership in developing a large complex and diverse portfolio of innovation projects and programmes, working with clinicians, academics, service managers, third sector, and industry partners. This includes defining innovation challenges, developing partners and consortiums to address these challenges. Her portfolio includes COPD and Long-Term Conditions Management, Paediatric Asthma, Cancer, Hip Fracture, and a proposed drone delivery network which connects hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres and GP surgeries across Scotland.
Samantha is passionate about leading service redesign and mapping clinical pathways to identify innovative opportunities for system wide change across health & social care to support the delivery of frontline services and improve outcomes for families and the care they receive.
Recently Samantha has just gotten married at Orocco Pier in South Queensferry, all her hard work and late nights paid off with an incredible wedding. If you ever need a wedding planner Samantha is the person.
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Kenny Macleod is a children’s asthma doctor and based at the Children’s Hospital in Edinburgh for the past 9 years. He works in a team of asthma nurses, doctors and physiotherapists and for a long time and has passion to improve how we look after children with asthma.
Professor David Price is Primary Care Respiratory Society Professor of Primary Care Respiratory Medicine at the University of Aberdeen (UK). He is the Founder and Head of The Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute (OPRI) Singapore, an independent, research-driven organisation established to cultivate initiatives, provide evidence, and drive quality standards within the growing field of real-life, pragmatic, and observational research. The Head of Optimum Patient Care (OPC) Global, Australia and UK, a social enterprise which focuses on disease registries and quality improvement in primary and secondary care. He leads the first International Severe Asthma Registry (ISAR) by creating a consortium of world leaders at the forefront of high risk asthma. ISAR research projects originate from the UK, Australia and globally, with over 30 collaborating countries.
Doctor Kirsty Fletton is a Medical Scientist working at the Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute (OPRI). She is primarily involved with the work with ISAR, the International Severe Asthma Registry, with a focus on high risk asthma. She has a passion for research in respiratory medicine and strives to support advancement in patient care through ISAR projects and collaboration with leading global experts in asthma. She graduated from the University of Liverpool with an MBChB and prior to her role as medical scientist obtained experience in clinical medicine working in the NHS for 5 years, with a subsequent 3 years in the private sector.
Luke’s current research seeks to improve the accuracy with which a diagnosis of asthma can be made in clinical practice. He was awarded a Chief Scientist Office Clinical Academic Fellowship (2017) for “deriving and validating a clinical prediction rule for the diagnosis of asthma in primary care”.
Arif Budiarto is a dedicated PhD student in the field of Medical Informatics at the prestigious University of Edinburgh. With a passion for AI in healthcare, Arif’s current research focuses on developing a machine learning model that aids clinicians in predicting patients at high risk of asthma attacks. By harnessing the power of AI and leveraging the abundant healthcare data available, Arif aims to contribute to the advancement of personalized and effective healthcare services. Through their work, Arif strives to make a positive impact in the field of medical informatics and improve patient outcomes.
Amy is a senior clinical academic pharmacist at the School of Pharmacy, University of Auckland, and working clinically in primary care. She also holds an honorary post at the Centre of Behavioural Medicine, University College London. Amy has specific research interests in digital health interventions and using big data to explore relationships between different risk factors and health outcomes. Amy has nearly 15 years’ experience in the public health service, where she led the clinical pharmacy service. She also provides consultancy to charities, medical research organisations, and non-government organisations. Amy is currently the global lead for workforce transformation with the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP), and the Commonwealth Pharmacists’ Association (CPA) Research Lead. Amy is a member of the global Respiratory Effectiveness Group (REG), Open Digital Health and leads a workstream for ERS CONNECT Clinical Research Collaboration – Moving multiple digital innovations towards connected respiratory care: addressing the over-arching challenges of whole systems implementation.
Laura is a Medical Statistician primarily interested in the development and validation of clinical prediction models for people with recurrent conditions such as epilepsy and asthma. She is based in the Department of Health Data Science at the University of Liverpool. Laura’s work has informed the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s regulations on time off driving for people with a first-ever seizure, and driving during and after anti-seizure medication withdrawal. This work has now also underpinned European Union policy on driving. Laura is a Chartered Statistician and a committed STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Ambassador. As part of these roles, she has developed statistical outreach activities which can be used by anyone with an interest in the area at a variety of events such as careers fairs, science festivals and STEM clubs (
For those of you who haven’t yet met me, hello! I am a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, working on improving methods for risk prediction modelling (primarily in asthma) and developing pathways for integration into primary care practice. Prior to Edinburgh, I worked at the University of Melbourne in mental health care, health in the justice system, and medico-legal complaints (quite a bizarre hodge-podge, but such is ECR research funding!) My background is as a statistician, but my passion is getting actionable insights from data. My motivation for starting this network was so that we can find mutually-beneficial routes to improving our research and getting closer to widespread patient benefit.