Our Team

Shobna gained a BSc in Pharmacology from Surrey University, and has worked with various Pharmaceutical companies, such as MSD, GSK, SKB, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk, for 25 years. The last 12 years have been spent project managing clinical trials within the University of Dundee, and currently Shobna is the National Programme Manager for SHARE. Her spare time is spent in raising funds for various charities, including Maggie's Dundee and especially the TICR Appeal for which she raised over £8 million (www.ticrappeal.com).

Prof Colin Palmer has pioneered population pharmacogenetic research in Scotland, with the establishment of the GoDARTS cohort in 1997 and the linkages to the electronic medical records, especially to the national prescribing records. His work played in a key role in the advances in GWAS discovery of genes for T2D, height and obesity, while paediatric asthma studies have provided novel pharmacogenetic discoveries, including the collaboration with Irwin McClean and the discovery of the Fillaggrin gene as a major determinant of eczema and asthma.

He has published over 400 papers in top journals including papers in Science, Nature, Nature Genetics and the New England Medical Journal. These papers have been cited by over 45,000 other studies worldwide. Professor Palmer has been listed as one of the world's most influential minds, 2001-2018 by Thomson Reuters based in the citations of his work. In March 2015 he was elected as a fellow to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. From 2017-2021 he was the Director of the NIHR Unit for Global Diabetes Outcomes Research, a partnership with the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation. He is also Director of the NHS Research Scotland national register (SHARE) which is the Scottish national platform for engagement and recruitment to clinical trials and spare blood bioresource.

Brian McKinstry has a background in general practice and is Emeritus Professor of Primary Care eHealth at the University of Edinburgh. He leads SHARE, the Scottish Health Research Register and Biobank, and until recently he led the Telescot programme of research into telehealth (www.telescot.org) 

His research interests are mainly around remote information exchange between clinicians and patients, more recently focussed on eHealth and telehealthcare. The Telescot programme has carried out multiple randomised controlled trials and descriptive/qualitative studies in this area. These studies include telemonitoring of chronic obstructive airways disease, heart failure, high blood pressure (HBP) and diabetes, remote measurement of cough and respiratory rate, the use of machine learning on patient accrued data to develop improved telemonitoring algorithms and video-consulting in general practice. He has also been working on the Scot-Heart 2 project exploring the use of CT scans in the management of cardiac risk.

Until recently he was clinical lead for Scale-Up BP, a large-scale implementation of telemonitoring of HBP, and is involved in a project to explore the use of routinely acquired data to evaluate this.

Brian is Director of SHARE. 

Chairperson:  Professor Iain B McInnes PhD, FRCP, FRSE, FMedSci, CBE,    

Vice-Principal and Head of College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Muirhead Professor of Medicine.  Professor of Rheumatology in the University.  

Director of SHARE

Professor Iain McInnes CBE is one of the leading figures in global research into rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis. His work has been hugely influential in driving new approaches and treatments for inflammatory diseases. Over two decades, he has led numerous clinical trials and pathogenesis investigation programmes in inflammatory arthritis at an international level. 

Professor Iain McInnes is Vice Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, Muirhead Chair of Medicine and Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology at the University of Glasgow. He is also Director of the Versus Arthritis Centre of Excellence for Inflammatory Arthritis, led from Glasgow and including Universities of Oxford, Newcastle, and Birmingham. He is the Chair of the Government’s Independent Advisory Group for COVID19 anti-viral strategies, which has assisted in the UofG being awarded CSO funding of more than £1million to undertake nine crucial COVID-19 research projects aimed at increasing the understanding of the coronavirus pandemic. 

He is the recipient of several prestigious prizes in recognition of his work, including the Sir James Black Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017 for “outstanding contribution to the field of immunology”, the Heberden Medal of the British Society for Rheumatology in 2018, and the Carol-Nachman Prize for Rheumatology in Germany (the highest international award in rheumatology) in 2019.  He was awarded a CBE for services to medicine by Her Majesty the Queen in 2019. 

Professor McInnes is Director of SHARE

Dr John Haughney is Associate Clinical Director of the NHS Clinical Research Facilities in Glasgow, a sessional general practitioner and hospital practitioner, a past-president of the International Primary Care Respiratory Group and a former Chair of the GPIAG (PCRS (UK)).  He holds academic positions at both the University of Glasgow and the University of Aberdeen.

Dr Sam Philip is currently working as a Consultant Physician in the department of Diabetes and Endocrinology and as an honorary senior lecturer in biomedical physics at the University of Aberdeen. His research interests include health informatics, clinical trials, epidemiology and diabetic retinopathy. He is leading the development of tele-consultation service for people with diabetes in Orkney and Shetland. He has a strong interest in the development of information based technologies to support self-care in people with diabetes.

Louise graduated with a PhD in microbiology from the University of Dundee, and has pursued a career in sales and training with the biomedical products sector. She joined SHARE in 2014 and is responsible for coordinating the SHARE study applications and recruitment to studies.

Nicola studied an HND in Business Studies with Languages at Napier University and has worked extensively in an administrative role over the last 20 + years. Her spare time is spent with her family and 2 teenage children. Nicola is responsible for the HR and administration function within the SHARE team.

Nicola joined SHARE in 2019 initially to recruit people in Scotland for health research but has since assumed an administrative role within the team which still includes recruitment. Nicola has spent her career in healthcare working as a registered nurse, in a variety of roles, for over 35 years.

In her spare time, Nicola tries to keep fit and enjoys spending time with friends and family and walking her dog. 

Adam obtained a BSc from Abertay University in 2013, and an MLitt from Dundee University two years later. He has worked in a broad range of administration and customer service roles for over a decade. In his spare time he volunteers with the Trussell Trust Foodbank and the Dundee Museum of Transport, and is also pursuing a distance-learning diploma in Scots Gaelic.

Dr Soha El-Batrawy joined the SHARE team in 2015. She first started at Fife HB, then was based in NHS Grampian, driving recruitment and raising the profile of SHARE. She also worked with SHARE in Lothian and Forth Valley hospitals. She recruited over 40,000 during her time with SHARE. Dr El-Batrawy comes from a media background and studied part of her PhD in Internet Advertising at the University of Stirling then returned as a postdoctoral fellow in 2007, where she concentrated on researching awareness with health issues. Finding her passion in this research area she studied Health Promotion at both Edinburgh and Robert Gordon universities.  During COVID Dr El-Batrawy went back to university teaching at the British University in Egypt and rejoined the SHARE team in 2023.