News details

The Health Innovation Education Cluster for the North East (HIEC) is pleased to announce the appointment of its new director.

 

Dr Philip Nichols, Consultant Neurologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, and Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, took up his position as Director of the Health Innovation and Education Cluster for the North East (HIEC) on 1st June and is tasked with helping accelerate progress in innovation and education within the NHS in order to drive up the quality of health care for the benefit of patients in the region.

 

Dr Nichols is a graduate of Newcastle University Medical School (BMedSci, MBBS Newcastle 1991) and holds a postgraduate qualification in Medicine from Oxford (MRC Clinical Research Fellow, DPhil, St. John’s College). In 2002 he won a Department of Health Clinician Scientist Award which funded his Multiple Sclerosis Research Group at Newcastle University and he is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a member of the Association of British Neurologists.

 

From 2005-’09, Dr Nichols held the position of Chief Medical Officer and Head of Clinical Development at Cambridge Laboratories (Ireland) Ltd, a UK & Ireland based entrepreneurial pharmaceutical company. He had overall responsibility for pre-clinical and clinical phases of drug development and was a member of the value realisation team negotiating the recent sale of a major pharmaceutical asset (Xenazine Nitoman), to BIOVAIL Corporation, Canada’s largest publically traded pharmaceutical company.

 

Dr Nichols is also the founder of NB Medical Education, the largest, specialist independent medical education company in the UK & Ireland delivering CPD update courses to over 5000 GPs per year.

 

The north east has become one of a handful of areas across England to receive government funding to develop a new kind of healthcare partnership that will ensure that patients receive better care. The HIEC aims to combine the expertise of industry, health and education to promote innovation in the NHS.

 

By working in partnership across sectors, the North East HIEC will speed up the adoption of research and innovation in the NHS and help deliver new healthcare techniques and treatments for the benefit of patients.

 

Based at RTC North, HIEC will work in partnership with the region’s Strategic Health Authority, NHS Trusts, Primary Care Trusts, Newcastle, Durham, Northumbria, Sunderland & Teesside Universities, One North East, the Association of North East Councils, NHS Innovations North, CETL4Health North East and the Confederation of British Industry North East.