Meet the Team

Nick is a consultant at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and a Professor of Cardiology at the University of Edinburgh. As the Senior Responsible Officer for the Data-Driven Innovation Programme in Health and Social Care at the University, he has overall responsibility for DataLoch. He has worked with routinely collected health care data for more than 10 years to develop approaches that improve the diagnosis and assessment of risk in people with heart disease.

Kathy is the Programme Lead for DataLoch. She is responsible for ensuring all elements of the DataLoch service are in place, including data quality, documentation and governance.

Kathy comes from a background in transformation and innovation and is driven by the potential for data-driven innovation to change the nature of healthcare and to provide insight into the individual and community experience of these services. 

Chloe is a Data Analyst with DataLoch. Chloe is mainly involved in data release for projects, but also supports database development and data quality checking. Chloe's background is in bioinformatics and biochemistry. 

Stephen is responsible for the management and governance of all data coming into DataLoch. This includes negotiating the integration of new datasets, and developing and managing relationships with a wide range of organisations that can contribute to the DataLoch team’s ambition of facilitating improvements in health and social care in South-East Scotland.

Pamela is the Information Governance Manager for DataLoch, and is responsible for establishing and maintaining Information Governance arrangements within DataLoch to ensure information is handled and used appropriately and securely.

Stuart is the Engagement Manager for DataLoch, responsible for broader communications and more specific engagement plans. This work focuses on ensuring our priorities align with those found in communities throughout South-East Scotland. He brings significant experience of interacting with different public groups – including research into young people’s engagement with science – to the DataLoch team.

Erin is a Data Analyst within NHS Lothian who is currently supporting DataLoch. Erin has experience in the data held by Primary Care and Community Pharmacy, as well as a background in scientific writing and data visualisation.

Shedrack is a Data Analyst within DataLoch. His role involves bringing data into DataLoch’s database, and ensuring data quality. Shedrack is also part of the DataLoch Natural Language Processing (NLP) development team.

Neil is a senior analyst in NHS Lothian who is currently supporting DataLoch. His role involves bringing new datasets into DataLoch’s database, and developing the supporting documentation, tooling, and processes to ensure robustness and data quality.

Neil has a background in the energy sector where he held various senior Data Management and analytical roles. In recent years, he has worked extensively with health care data with particular emphasis on outpatient, waiting time and community prescribing datasets.

Ally is the Principal Architect for DataLoch and is responsible for the scalable infrastructure solution and technology strategy for the team.

Ally’s background covers a wide range of data-related projects including the Scottish medical imaging research repository, mathematical modelling of plant biology, distributed data integration systems, financial data mining, and image analysis to detect breast cancer. Ally looks to engineer solutions, tooling and innovations that will help the DataLoch team deliver quality data in the most straightforward way, and with robust data-security controls.

Atul is an NHS Consultant Geriatrician and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. He is particularly interested in improving the inclusion of older people and those living with frailty in service evaluation and research, with the aim of reducing inequalities in health and social care provision.

Atul’s role within DataLoch is as the team’s clinical expert, working with the technical team and clinical colleagues to build a quality data resource that is valuable to research and clinical practice. His expertise is crucial in understanding health and research priorities and in unpicking data challenges and improving data quality.

Learn more about the clinical team on the 'Meet the Team' page below.
 

Arlene is a Research Fellow currently working in the Advanced Care Research Centre, University of Edinburgh. Her interests are in how Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be used to model information stored in free-text electronic health records and to extract this information to develop better understanding of medical conditions. Arlene previously worked in industry delivering data-driven insights.

Arlene’s role in DataLoch is to support the building of NLP capacity to enable ACRC research applications.

Robert has a long-established interest in health data science, demonstrated by his involvement in data analysis and modelling work at MyWay Digital Health Diabetes division, as well as his PhD in ‘Data Science for Health Technology Assessment’.

Prior to his PhD, Robert gathered skills and experiences from a broad range of disciplines, including Health and Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience, Biophysics, Data Analytics, and Data Science and Business.
 

Michael is the Implementation Lead for the Data-Driven Innovation Programme in Health and Social Care, of which DataLoch is part. He is responsible for ensuring the different programme elements combine effectively to fulfil the programme's vision of creating an innovation hub where public, private and third sectors collaborate to realise data-driven advances in the delivery of health and social care.

Michael has extensive experience across the health and social care sector – as a clinician, in service management and business enterprise – giving a rich insight into the opportunities, and challenges, offered by innovation.

Sophie is a Data Analyst within DataLoch, having previously worked as an Information Analyst within the Outpatients Redesign team in NHS Lothian. She is experienced in working with laboratory data through her past Biomedical Scientist role, where she specialised in Transfusion Science, as well as Drug Safety.

Paul is the Natural Language Processing (NLP) Lead within the DataLoch team. His role involves developing processes for reliably converting unstructured free text into de-identified, structured data for use within DataLoch and for approved projects. He also works with the NHS, EPCC, and academic partners in producing NLP approaches that lead to improvements in service management and research.

Amy is the Information Governance Facilitator within DataLoch. The role is responsible for ensuring all projects within DataLoch follow required governance procedures, policies and documentation.

Amy has a lot of experience in supporting trusted users to access Scottish data for research – she has worked in data acquisition, information governance, data linkage and research support roles for several partnerships using the Scottish National Safe Haven. Amy is also part of the multi-agency team that delivers Safe Researcher Training in Scotland.
 

Jennifer is a Data Analyst within DataLoch, contributing to service development and project data delivery. She has a wide range of experience in data analysis and data management in bioscience research. Her previous roles include Senior Bioinformatician at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Research Data Support in the University of Edinburgh Information Services. Jennifer is an advocate of FAIR data and a qualified Data Carpentries instructor.

Stephen is the Service Manager for DataLoch, responsible for end-to-end delivery, from project application through to delivery of the service. He also incorporates user feedback into improving DataLoch systems and services. Stephen's background is in government health management, planning and policy in East Africa, West Africa and Southeast Asia. Stephen believes in leveraging routine data to reduce health disparities and improve everyone's quality of life.

Chris has significant experience of enabling health data research through his previous roles in NHS Lothian Research and Development, the Lothian Research Safe Haven, and a secondment to the electronic Data Research and Innovation Service (eDRIS). He is now a data analyst within DataLoch’s project delivery team, delivering project data securely to researchers and drawing on his knowledge of a wide variety of health specialty areas.