Meet the Team

Nick is a consultant at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and a Professor of Cardiology at the University of Edinburgh. As the Senior Responsible Officer for the Data-Driven Innovation Programme in Health and Social Care at the University, he has overall responsibility for DataLoch. He has worked with routinely collected health care data for more than 10 years to develop approaches that improve the diagnosis and assessment of risk in people with heart disease.

Kathy is the Programme Lead for DataLoch. She is responsible for ensuring all elements of the DataLoch service are in place, including data quality, documentation and governance.

Kathy comes from a background in transformation and innovation and is driven by the potential for data-driven innovation to change the nature of healthcare and to provide insight into the individual and community experience of these services. 

Tahira is responsible for all aspects of service delivery. She has had a substantive role in major research programmes utilising large-scale data, mainly within oral health improvement among prisoners, and diabetes and related complications in the Scottish population. She has extensive experience leveraging her knowledge of the research lifecycle to develop IT strategies and deliver service improvements. Tahira ensures DataLoch delivers a high service standard while actively engaging researchers to shape future enhancements. 

Stephen is responsible for the management and governance of all data coming into DataLoch. This includes negotiating the integration of new datasets, and developing and managing relationships with a wide range of organisations that can contribute to the DataLoch team’s ambition of facilitating improvements in health and social care in South-East Scotland.

Judit has a background in (computational) linguistics and data engineering. Her most recent role involved cloud-platform engineering, prior to which she had worked on both speech- and language-technology projects (e.g. voice verification software, the Hungarian WordNet, etc), both as engineer / analyst and researcher, in academic and private-sector settings.

Jake’s focus is to provide high-quality administrative support for all aspects of the DataLoch application process.

He helps to ensure an efficient and supportive service for all DataLoch applicants. He brings vast experience in delivering administrative support from numerous previous roles within the NHS.

Zengyi is a Data Analyst, contributing to database development and project data delivery. He has more than 20 years’ experience in IT and data science, particularly in building large, complex longitudinal data infrastructure and providing data service and support. His previous roles include Senior Bioinformation Analyst within Generation Scotland; Database Developer and Researcher at Longitudinal Study Centre – Scotland (home of the Scottish Longitudinal Study); and Database Manager of the Digitising Scotland project.

Pamela is the Information Governance Manager for DataLoch, and is responsible for establishing and maintaining Information Governance arrangements within DataLoch to ensure information is handled and used appropriately and securely.

Rob is a Data Analyst specialising in data analysis and visualisation, supporting project delivery at DataLoch. He brings valuable experience from NHS Lothian Analytical Services, where he supported the Unscheduled Care team.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rob worked with Public Health Scotland, contributing to the Scottish National Audit Programme across various areas, including the Scottish Intensive Care Audit Group, Scottish Stroke Care Audit, Scottish Hip Fracture Audit, and Musculoskeletal Audit.

Rob has a strong background in cognitive psychology, investigating cognitive processing through the study of eye movements during reading.

With a background as a Medical Oncology Registrar at the Beatson Cancer Centre in Glasgow, Sam also brings expertise as a Computer Scientist, specialising in artificial intelligence and deep learning.

His PhD research focuses on leveraging the innovative field of natural language processing to analyse clinical documentation and other free-text data within electronic health records. By integrating this technology with patient questionnaires, he aims to generate accurate, up-to-date, and concise summaries of a patient’s condition or journey.

Stuart is the Engagement Manager for DataLoch, responsible for broader communications and more specific engagement plans. This work focuses on ensuring our priorities align with those found in communities throughout South-East Scotland. He brings significant experience of interacting with different public groups – including research into young people’s engagement with science – to the DataLoch team.

Erin is a Data Analyst, who brings a wealth of experience to DataLoch from her time with the NHS Lothian Analytical Services team. Her particular expertise is centred on Primary Care and Community Pharmacy data – in combination with improving the user experience – and she also has a background in scientific writing and data visualisation.

Shedrack is a Data Analyst within DataLoch. His role involves bringing data into DataLoch’s database, and ensuring data quality. Shedrack is also part of the DataLoch Natural Language Processing (NLP) development team.

Derek is the DataLoch Developer, responsible for the continuous enhancement of systems and processes – as well as the development of novel tools – with the overall goal of improving service delivery.

Derek has extensive industry experience in software development, systems integration, and application lifecycle management. Derek’s focus is for DataLoch to deliver secure, scalable, user-friendly solutions that ensure projects are centred on the best-quality data available.

Amy brings to the team diverse experiences of working with data. She has worked with a data-engineering team within a financial services company to develop tools that support management decision-making. Prior to this, Amy was in the charity sector, focusing on campaign delivery, data visualisation, and creating analysis to support social responsibility goals.

Colin is a Data Analyst, who brings a wealth of experience to DataLoch from his time with the NHS Lothian Analytical Services team. He has worked with varied datasets across the NHS, especially Emergency Department, Stroke Care and Public Health. Colin has particular expertise in applying Quality Improvement methodology to local improvement projects.

Elvina is the Data Manager for DataLoch, responsible for effective and secure data flow and the ongoing data quality of the database. Elvina's background is in biomedical data science and she has worked with a variety of clinical and research datasets, including neuroimaging, genomics, population cohorts and longitudinal studies. She looks to establish data access opportunities that expand the possibilities of innovation in health research.

I have a research background (from basic to more applied research) where I have developed a passion for analysing datasets. In my previous role, I was working on a drug discovery project during which I was driven by a quote from Paul Janssen: “The patient is waiting!” This translates into my current role at DataLoch, where I enable researchers to use data to improve health and social care.

Ally is the Principal Architect for DataLoch and is responsible for the scalable infrastructure solution and technology strategy for the team.

Ally’s background covers a wide range of data-related projects including the Scottish medical imaging research repository, mathematical modelling of plant biology, distributed data integration systems, financial data mining, and image analysis to detect breast cancer. Ally looks to engineer solutions, tooling and innovations that will help the DataLoch team deliver quality data in the most straightforward way, and with robust data-security controls.

After starting at the Scottish Wildlife Trust in a corporate reporting role, I moved to NHS Lothian as part of the Business Intelligence group. During that time, I gained deep knowledge of secondary care data (the TRAK system) and developing reports from these data. My experience delivers complementary insights of hospital data for my position with DataLoch’s development team.

Matúš is an NLP research fellow and a DataLoch Associate NLP Analyst. His work in DataLoch focusses on Natural Language Processing (NLP) of clinical notes centred around treatment response for mental health. His PhD research was on the technical challenges for machine-learning techniques when seeking to convert hospital discharge summaries into clinical codes. His industrial experience includes research in medical image processing, clinical NLP, and biomedical NLP.

Sara brings a bioinformatics background to her Data Scientist role. Prior to joining DataLoch, she was at the BREATHE Hub where she was involved in a collaboration that curated respiratory datasets from GP records in England and Wales. Previously to this, Sara worked for two years as a database support engineer for data from people with diabetes in Scotland.

Matthew is a Data Analyst within DataLoch. His role primarily involves project delivery and database development. His background is in molecular biology and biochemistry, knowledge of which are vital for the DataLoch datasets related to these specialisms. Prior to joining the team, Matthew graduated into the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic through working in Glasgow’s Lighthouse Laboratory, primarily as a data scientist.  

Atul is an NHS Consultant Geriatrician and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. He is particularly interested in improving the inclusion of older people and those living with frailty in service evaluation and research, with the aim of reducing inequalities in health and social care provision.

Atul’s role within DataLoch is as the team’s clinical expert, working with the technical team and clinical colleagues to build a quality data resource that is valuable to research and clinical practice. His expertise is crucial in understanding health and research priorities and in unpicking data challenges and improving data quality.

Learn more about the clinical team on the 'Meet the Team' page below.
 

Arlene is a Dunhill Medical Trust Senior Research Fellow and DataLoch’s Principal NLP Data Scientist. Her research is focused to advancing the secure provision of large-scale clinical free-text for studies involving older people, and the development and validation of new prediction tools for outcomes crucial for older individuals. Arlene’s unique blend of extensive industry experience and passion for research enriches her DataLoch role, where she is responsible for crafting implementable solutions for free-text data access and NLP-based innovations.

Marta comes from a biomedical research background, where her main areas of expertise and interest were in immunology and haematology. More recently, she worked as an analyst programmer for a clinical trials unit, as well as a data scientist for private-sector organisations.

Amy is the Information Governance Facilitator within DataLoch. The role is responsible for ensuring all projects within DataLoch follow required governance procedures, policies and documentation.

Amy has a lot of experience in supporting trusted users to access Scottish data for research – she has worked in data acquisition, information governance, data linkage and research support roles for several partnerships using the Scottish National Safe Haven. Amy is also part of the multi-agency team that delivers Safe Researcher Training in Scotland.
 

With a background in bioinformatics, I have experience with the handling, linking and visualisation of various biological datasets, including genomic, routinely collected healthcare, and prospective cohort study data. Prior to my current role, I was involved in the facilitation and performance of research relating to COVID-19 patient hospitalisation and follow-up, with my own research focusing on patients that were particularly vulnerable during the pandemic. 

Chris has significant experience of enabling health data research through his previous roles in NHS Lothian Research and Development, the Lothian Research Safe Haven, and a secondment to the electronic Data Research and Innovation Service (eDRIS). He is now a data analyst within DataLoch’s project delivery team, delivering project data securely to researchers and drawing on his knowledge of a wide variety of health specialty areas.