Jeremy Myerson

Principal Investigator

Jeremy Myerson is Director of the Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, where he holds the Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design and is a member of the College's senior management team. An author, academic and activist in people-centred design, he was founder-editor of DesignWeek magazine in the UK and established InnovationRCA, the College's innovation network for business. He has supervised many projects in the medical device and health communication area and is the author of many books on design, the latest of which, New Demographics New Workspace, will be published in spring 2010 by Gower.

Jeremy Myerson is a Board Member of the Design Council, a Trustee of the Audi Design Foundation and a former member of the London NHS Design Advisory Group. In 2004-5, he led the Helen Hamlyn Centre's involvement in the multi-disciplinary study Critical Points: Improving patient experience of the NHS, which was commissioned by NHS Chief Executive Sir Nigel Crisp and coordinated by the Sorrell Foundation.

Ed Matthews

Project Manager

Ed has over 30 years of design and engineering experience, specialising in medical devices and healthcare products since 1990. With senior roles for PA Technology Centre and other UK medical design consultancies, his work has encompassed drug delivery and diagnostic devices, surgical implants and instrumentation and laboratory equipment. He has an extensive network of contacts and brings valuable expertise to the programme. With responsibility for project planning, management, and commercialisation, he will ensure that targets, deliverables and outcomes are met in a timely manner.

Bev Norris

Co-Investigator

Beverley Norris a Senior Researcher at the Hamlyn Centre, Human Factors Lead at the National Patient Safety Agency and one of the Co-Investigators on DOME. Beverley has over 20 years experience in ergonomics, human factors and designing for safety, and her PhD considered how to make ergonomics methods accessible to designers concerned with product safety. Having worked in the fields of consumer products, child safety, and industrial safety, Beverley has specialised in rail human factors and in the field of patient safety and medical systems.

Jonathan West

Senior Associate

Jonathan has a background in design and engineering, with a first degree in Mechanical Engineering at Birmingham University. Since completing his Masters in Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art in 2003, Jonathan has designed a powered paediatric wheelchair for Sunrise Medical, before joining the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. He is working on a new resuscitation trolley for the National Patient Safety Agency, which has won two Medical Futures Innovation Awards and is currently being finalised for manufacture. His research interests include design for patient safety and inclusive design, and his work has been published internationally in a variety of journals, books and papers.

Grace Davey

Research Associate

Grace completed her first degree at Bristol University where she earned a Bachelors in Engineering, which included a year in industry at Ove Arup. Her desire to problem solve and utilise her engineering skills in a more tangible way led her to the Royal College of Art where she completed a Masters in Industrial Design Engineering, and received a bursary from the Royal Commission of 1851 given to UK emerging talent. Her interests look at how the coupling of design and engineering can make a critical difference and she has developed people centered techniques to enable this. Awards include Imperial Young Innovator of the Year, Dyson Award Finalist and two MADE awards for her use of materials.  A central focus of her work is design within the healthcare sector.

Professor George Hanna

Co-Investigator, Clinical practice and Imperial College lead

George is the lead clinician for North West London Upper Gastrointestinal Unit and the head for NHS liaison at the Academic Surgical Unit at St Mary’s Hospital. His research interest is ergonomics, instrument design, computer controlled surgical systems and surgical safety. He has a large research programme which entails collaborative work with the NPSA, National Cancer Action Team and General Medical Council. He is a full member of the Ergonomic Society and has awarded King James IV Professorship by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for his contribution in surgical ergonomics and Technology. Mr George Hanna will give a clinical lead and supervise the more junior clinicians on the study.

Professor Charles Vincent

Co-Investigator

In 1985 Charles Vincent began researching the causes and consequences of harm to patients and methods of prevention at UCL, and St Mary's Hospital Medical School, becoming Professor of Psychology in 2000. He established the Clinical Risk Unit at UCL in 1995 and now directs the Clinical Safety Research Unit at Imperial College London (CRSU). He is the author of Patient Safety (Elsevier, 2006), editor of Clinical Risk Management (BMJ Publications, 2nd edition, 2001), and many papers on risk, safety and medical error. A member of the UK Commission for Health Improvement, he also advises the NPSA. Professor Vincent will give a lead with regard to patient safety and healthcare process factors.

Rajesh Aggawal

Co-Investigator

Rajesh Aggarwal began his medical training at Selwyn College, Cambridge University and completed clinical studies at The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London, graduating with Honours. Subsequently he has completed surgical training in London teaching hospitals, and a PhD thesis at Imperial College London entitled ‘A Proficiency-Based Technical Skills Curriculum for Laparoscopic Surgery’. His work has been published in over 50 peer-reviewed papers, including Annals of Surgery, the British Medical Journal and New England Journal of Medicine.

Dissemination of research is actively pursued through membership of committees directed by the Department of Health, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the European Association of Endoscopic Surgeons and the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons, together with the delivery of presentations to a number of audiences worldwide.

Oliver Anderson

Clinical Research Fellow

Oliver is a General Surgery Registrar. Oliver studied Medicine and also completed a BSc in Neuroscience at University College London. He is currently completing an MSc in Surgical Practice at the University of Kent and is doing a research project on predicting the presence of bowel cancer. Oliver is also a numbered General Surgery Trainee in the South East Thames region and has worked at St. Thomas' Hospital and Eastbourne. Oliver is working in the DOME project, supervised by Prof. George Hanna and Prof. Charles Vincent to complete a PhD in Patient Safety and hopes that he can carry the lessons learnt from the research into clinical practice.

Andrea Brodie

Clinical Research Fellow

Andrea joined the Clinical Safety Research Unit (CSRU) in May 2005 as a Research Associate. Prior to this she completed her BSc in Psychology and went on to complete her MSc in Health Psychology. Since joining the CSRU, Andrea has worked on several different projects, but has a key interest in design for patient safety and works in collaboration with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. She has worked previously on the development of a new resuscitation trolley, which won two Medical Futures Innovation Awards and is currently being implemented into clinical trials, funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Andrea is currently undertaking her PhD, funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), looking at improving through design the medication delivery process.  Andrea is also currently pursuing her Chartership status in Health Psychology.

John Bessant

Co-Investigator

John holds the Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Exeter where he is also Research Director; he  is also Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business School . In 2003 he was awarded a Senior Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. Author of 15 books and many articles, and advisor to governments and international bodies including the UN, The World Bank and the OECD, Professor Bessant will direct and supervise the study on analogous industry practice and contribute to plans for exploitation and protection of resulting Intellectual Property.

Maria Kapsali

Research Associate

Maria graduated from Manchester Business School with a PhD in Business Administration with specialization in Operations, Technology and Innovation Management. Her PhD won funding from UMIST, Manchester School of Management. Since her graduation on December 2008, she has been a visiting researcher first in the Business Systems Division and later on the Innovation Management and Policy Division at Manchester Business School, and is also a research associate at Imperial College Business School, London.

Maria has seven years of research experience as a doctoral/visiting researcher, research assistant and research associate in the areas of: Operations Management, Project Management, Innovation Systems and Innovation Policy, Healthcare operations and Qualitative Methods. Previous qualifications include a BA Hons in Business (DeMontfort) and an MSc in Operations Management (UMIST).

Emma Stanton

Co-Investigator

Emma is a Specialist Registrar in Psychiatry at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, currently in the US as a Harkness Fellow. From 2008 - 2010, she was seconded to the Chief Medical Officer as a Clinical Advisor.

Emma has an Executive MBA from Imperial College, London. Her dissertation on "What can patient safety learn from analogous high hazard industries?" was supervised by Professor John Bessant and Mr Raj Aggarwal. She is a former Chair of BAMMbino, a rapidly growing nationwide network of junior doctors interested in future careers in management and leadership. Emma is co-editor of 'Clinical Leadership: Bridging the divide' (Quay Books, 2009). In 2009, Emma was appointed as an Emerging Leader to the National Leadership Council, chaired by the Chief Executive of the NHS.

Roger Coleman

Advisory Board Chair

Roger Coleman is Professor Emeritus of the Royal College of Art (RCA) and co-founder of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the RCA. Roger has pioneered work in design for patient safety. In 2003 he co-led a multi-centre team in a study for the DoH into the use of design to reduce medical accidents, which led to the establishment of the MRC/EPSRC Design for Patient Safety Network. He was a member of the NPSA prioritisation panel and works closely with the agency.

Under his leadership the study has underpinned practical projects at the RCA resulting in design exemplars and guidance publications in collaboration with the NPSA. He was co-proposer of the EPSRC Sandpit on Taking Healthcare to the Patient and is Co-Investigator on a resulting multi-centre research and design project exploring new delivery systems for urgent and emergency healthcare. Professor Coleman will lead the programme, chair key meetings and with the Co-Investigators will review progress and guide individual researchers and designers.

Advisory Board Members

Shahana Mirza, Health and Safety, APM Ltd, Canada

Prof Nick Cheshire, Prof of Vascular Surgery, St Mary’s Hospital NHS Trust

Dr Sally Curtis, Microbiologist, St Mary’s Hospital NHS Trust

Colum Lowe, Being Design

Colin Mathews, Chief Operating Officer, Team Consulting Ltd

Prof Barrie Mintz, Patient representative

John Warrington, Deputy Director, Policy & Research, Procurement, Investment & Commercial Division, Department of Health

Prof John Wilson, Prof of Human Factors, University of Nottingham

Andrew Worthington, Senior Nurse St Mary’s Hospital NHS Trust

Interesting Links

Related Projects

Resus-station
A comprehensive redesign of the resuscitation trolley, born out of a research project in the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design.

Design Bugs Out
The Design Council and the Department of Health brought designers together with clinical specialists, patients and frontline staff to use design in the fight against Healthcare Associated Infections.  A team from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design redesigned six everyday items of hospital equipment.

Smart Pods
A two-year research project to facilitate the delivery of urgent healthcare in the community.  Funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Smart Pods involves designers from the Royal College of Art as well as academics from Loughborough University and the Universities of the West of England, Bath and Plymouth.

Welcoming Workplace
Rethinking office environments to enable growing numbers of older people to participate in the 21st century knowledge economy. Welcoming Workplace is a research project in the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, funded as part of the Designing for the 21st Century initiative.

Relevant Institutions

Royal College of Art
The world’s most influential postgraduate art and design school.

Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design provides a focus for people-centred design and innovation at the RCA in London.

Imperial College
Consistently rated amongst the world's best universities, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research.

Department of Bio Surgery and Surgical Technology
The Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology operates on the St Mary's, Hammersmith and Charing Cross campuses. The Department encompasses a broad range of world class research groups with specialist skills.

Imperial College Business School
Imperial College Business School is one of Europe’s most dynamic centres for innovation and entrepreneurship.  It is a constituent faculty of Imperial College London.

Design London
Design London brings together creativity and expertise in design from the Royal College of Art, engineering from Imperial College's Faculty of Engineering and the business of innovation from imperial College Business School.

St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington
St Mary's is a general acute hospital operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality

Clinical Safety Research Unit

National Patient Safety Agency
The National Patient Safety Agency leads and contributes to improved, safe patient care by informing, supporting and influencing the health sector.

Medcines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency
Governmental agency with responsibility for standards of safety, quality and performance.

Ergonomics Society
An international organisation for professionals using knowledge of human abilities and limitations to design and build for comfort, efficiency, productivity and safety.

NHS Connecting for Health
NHS Connecting for Health supports the NHS in providing better, safer care, by delivering computer systems and services that improve how patient information is stored and accessed.

NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement
Assists the NHS in transforming healthcare for patients by developing and spreading new work practices, technology and improved leadership.

NHS Supply Chain
NHS Supply Chain provides customer-focused healthcare products and supply chain services to the UK's National Health Service.

Centre for Evidence Based Purchasing
The Centre for Evidence-based Purchasing (CEP) provides impartial and objective information about medical technology to help the NHS make better purchasing.