March/April 2014

With stupendous efforts from the school, especially from the Deputy Head, Craig Donaldson we are pleased to announce further accreditation successes for our degree programmes. Both our Healthcare Science programmes have been accredited by the Institute of Biomedical Science and the Health and Care Professions Council. Our Healthcare Science (Physiological Sciences) was highly commended by the Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists on their accreditation visit. Finally we have launched an extensive portfolio of Masters in Biomedical Science degrees that will start in September 2014. These programmes are shortly to be reviewed by the IBMS. See

http://www1.plymouth.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/4797/Pages/CourseOverview.aspx

Many in my field of Transfusion Medicine were saddened to learn of the death of Prof George Garratty, Scientific Director of the American Red Cross Transfusion Service, Los Angeles on 17^th March 2014. I’d known George for almost 25 years, and he had always been a source of inspiration. He gave his time to all that asked for it, this altruism was a total reflection on the man he was, a genuinely nice person, and consequently hugely respected by all who knew of him. We routinely met at the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) and other conferences for a beer(s) or dinner to discuss various Transfusion politics and scientific developments described in recent papers. George was one of the “English mafia” of Transfusion scientists that emigrated to the USA in the 1960s. This group routinely socialised and organised the infamous “English nights” at the annual AABB congress. I met him at one of these auspicious events in 1990. George was an expert on autoimmune haemolytic anaemias amongst many other things, and a hyperactive section editor for the Journal Transfusion for which I referee at least one paper a month. He was also one of my external referees for my Professorial and Reader applications over a decade ago. I’m to travel to the USA twice later this year on Transfusion medicine related business, it won’t be the same without him being there. RIP George.

https://www.cbbsweb.org/aboutus/memorials/garratty.php

January/ February 2014

Welcome to my new Blog - a new year's resolution to routinely update this. First happy new year to all staff, students and readers of this Blog. 2013 was a challenging year for the school (in a positive way), as we were created. It was always the intention for a School of Biomedicine and Healthcare Sciences (SoBHS) to be created at Plymouth University, and we achieved this on August 1st after growing exponentially from within the school of Biomedical and Biological Sciences. SoBHS moved into our medical school, (Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, PSMD) and we are delighted and excited by this new opportunity. But there is still much to do- we are very ambitious and want to build the finest school delivering Biomedical sciences in the country, and based around a strong research focus within our medical school.

Degree Accreditations and new Masters courses

Late in 2013 we worked very hard in obtaining accreditation from various Professional bodies, including the Health and Care Professions council, the Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists, Healthcare Education England and the Institute for Biomedical Science. Whilst we do not yet have formal approvals (there were conditions required to be met), we are confident that all of our programmes will be accredited by key professional bodies. Our new MSc in Biomedical Sciences has been approved by the academic degrees committee of the University, and we will launch this suite of programmes in September this year.

January 15th marked the closing of UCAS applications, and we are delighted with an upsurge in applications for all of our programmes, which is a continuation of our expansion of the past three years. We have also taken steps so that our graduates have a clearly defined pathway into medicine or dentistry, whilst this must be approved within the University and externally with the GMC and GDC, we are hoping that these enhancements will be in place for our 2015 graduate entry. Our continued expansion in student numbers has allowed us to consider more additions to our academic staffing, three new posts are likely this year.

Research

Research in the school continues to flourish with several new large grants being won over the past six months. We continue to recruit new PhD students, but want more. We are shortly to advertise six PhD bursaries for October 2014 start. These students will drive our research agenda forward, and all projects will be focused on the systems biology investments we have made since 2010.

In January I visited Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as a judge for the King Faisal award in medicine. Prof Dennis Lo from the Chinese University of Hong Kong was awarded this years prize for his work in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, many congratulations Dennis, well deserved.

Finally, earlier this week the first meeting of the John Bull Building extension project working group met. The University will be investing in a state of the art £12.5 million building to house Biomedical researchers, and thus move our main research labs from main campus to a site adjacent to the current PSMD John Bull building, and close to Derriford hospital. A hugely exciting project, which is going to occupy much of my workload in the next 2-3 years, can’t wait for it to be built!