Sullivan Frank

Biography

Frank has been an academic GP since joining a practice in Blantyre, Lanarkshire in 1984.  During his early years in practice he undertook a PhD in Glasgow University and a sabbatical year to work as a GP in the Seychelles.  He left to take up the NHS Tayside chair of General Practice and Primary Care in the University of Dundee in 1998.  He was appointed as the Director of the Scottish School of Primary Care in 2007. Franks research interests lie mainly in health informatics and community based trials, covering the spectrum from record-linkage of electronic health records to decision support to the evaluation of complex interventions. He has published widely on a number of different types of primary care research notably in the management of long-term conditions such as diabetes and coronary heart disease in the community. He has published 200 journal articles including the BMA research paper of the year in 2009 for a New England Journal of Medicine Paper on the early management of Bell’s Palsy.  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 2011.

Research Interest

Frank’s research interests lie mainly in health informatics and community based trials, covering the spectrum from record-linkage of electronic health records to decision support to the evaluation of complex interventions.   His PhD in health services research was mainly quantitative though his subsequent work in the evaluation of computers in primary care has allowed him to develop skills in record linkage, observational epidemiology, decision support studies, design and conduct of pragmatic clinical trials, economic analyses and systematic reviews. He has been involved in the establishment and development of the Scottish School of Primary Care (SSPC) which seeks to provide opportunities for all primary care clinicians to engage in research throughout Scotland.