I am a retired senior IT manager, who spent 32 years in BT and its predecessors, almost entirely in IT. Early retirement in 1993 was necessitated by worsening ME which had its onset in 1991. Also I was a Trustee of CHROME from 1999 until the closure of the charity in 2008.
Living in Solihull, West Midlands, I am retired and caring for my wife who has quite severe ME, which she has had for many years.
Qualified in Engineering, but switched to Marketing and then General Management in a large blue-chip Company in consumer branded goods.
I have also worked in other voluntary groups; M/S, Disadvantaged children, Local ME Support Group and as a school Governor.
I qualified at Birmingham University Medical School in 1970 and entered General Practice in 1973. My eldest daughter developed ME in 1993 and was severely affected and bedbound for 16 months. She was an in-patient under Professor Leslie Findley in Romford as there was no local help or guidance in Swindon. I was supported in the setting up of a local service and from 1997 headed up the Swindon and Wiltshire ME/CFS Service with NHS funding. Two separate cancer illnesses forced my retirement in April 2009 but I have retained a keen interest in the ME sphere and in particular, research developments into the possible cause(s) of this condition.
I qualified in medicine in 1969, and also have a BSc, and higher degrees in social policy and law. I am a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, and for the greater part of my career have worked in universities as an academic epidemiologist. I have also worked in hospital medicine and as a GP.
My initial areas of academic specialisation were cancer and information systems, including disease registers. As Director of the South-Western Regional Cancer Registry, I coordinated its computerisation in the 1990s, and represented the UK on the Permanent Steering Committee of the European Network of Cancer Registries.
I have had a long-term interest in ME/CFS, and was, successively, a member of the National Task Force, the Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group, and most recently, the Medical Research Council’s Expert group on ME/CFS.
I am currently Visiting Professor of Epidemiology at Buckinghamshire New University.
I qualified at Birmingham University Medical School in 1966 and was a lecturer in pathology from 1968 to 1977 at the Birmingham Medical School. I retired from clinical practice as a Consultant Pathologist in 2000 at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital NHS Trust after more than 30 years service. Also I retired as an Honorary Consultant in Epidemiology at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital NHS Trust and a Senior Research Fellow in the Unit of Applied Epidemiology at the University of the West of England.
My continuing interests encompass; cervical screening, cervical neoplasia and treatment as an outpatient with loop excision (LEEP), clinical computerisation, medical coding including SNOMED, ICD-10 and ICDO, medical audit and cancer Registration.
I was an advisor to the NHS Executive, World Health Organisation, Brazilian government and the Australian NSW Health Board
My interest in ME/CFS was developed in the late 1980’s when it was recognised as a debilitating disease