Thomas M

Biography

Tom MacDonald is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology & Pharmacoepidemiology in the Medicines Monitoring Unit, Medical School, University of Dundee and Honorary Consultant Physician at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee His research interests include hypertension, cardiovascular disease, pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety. He is currently the Director of Tayside Medicines Monitoring Unit (MEMO) and the Hypertension Research Centre.  He is also an elected member of the European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP) and is the research director of the Regional Cardiovascular Risk Clinic (a European Society of Hypertension designated centre of excellence). He is currently the principal investigator of two large, multi-national, multi-centre streamlined safety studies; the Standard care versus Celecoxib Outcomes Trial (SCOT) and the Febuxostat versus Allopurinol Safety Trial) FAST.  He is the Principal Investigator on the TIME study and also on the executive committee for the ALL-HEART and PATHWAY I, 2 and 3 studies. He is Past President of the British Hypertension Society, the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology and the Pharmacovigilance Committee on Safety of Medicine. Professor MacDonald has published extensively on drug safety especially the safety of non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). He has also published many studies of hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disorders.

Research Interest

The main thrust of Professor MacDonald’s research in the last 20 years has been the development of the Tayside Medicines Monitoring Unit (MEMO) (http://www.dundee.ac.uk/memo/). This was a system designed to detect and quantify serious toxicity arising in association with marketed drugs prescribed in the community. MEMO utilised record-linkage techniques, the linking of patient-specific dispensed prescriptions to hospital admissions, in order to carry out such studies. Streamlined Clinical Trials MEMO now carries out streamlined clinical trials. These are done by searching practice computers for suitable patients, the GP then writes to suitable subjects and those that agree are assessed for suitability and then randomised to get prescribed treatments. This methodology has attracted >£50m in funding to do large clinical trials. These trials run in the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands. Hypertension and Cardiovascular Research Professor MacDonald’s main clinical interest is in the management of hypertension and this is also an area of research interest. He has been fortunate enough to attract substantial industry funding in this area and has published widely on several topics in this area. He has supervised 14 PhD/MD students. published widely on several topics in this area.