The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2016 - Medicine

Sir Paul Nurse, photographed at the Crick Institute (Rebecca Reid)
7 September 2016

Sir Paul Nurse

Chief executive, Francis Crick Institute

The opening of the Francis Crick Institute’s doors crowned five years of work for Sir Paul in establishing the biomedical research centre on its new King’s Cross site. He stood down as president of the Royal Society last year but remains arguably Britain’s top scientist, a livewire geneticist with a Nobel prize for his work on DNA.

Paul Workman

Chief executive, Institute of Cancer Research

A great year for Professor Workman and the ICR. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society — one of the greatest honours in UK science. His colleague Professor Jonathon Pines, head of cancer biology, was also made a fellow. Then the ICR was awarded a highly prestigious Regius professorship by the Queen to mark her 90th birthday — one of a select group of 12 institutions across the country to be granted the title.

Edward Baker

Deputy chief inspector of hospitals, Care Quality Commission

The CQC’s investigations continue to set the agenda for London’s embattled NHS hospitals. Executive teams spend weeks in preparation for the arrival of inspectors, and the rest of the year often trying to put right the shortcomings identified. The gradual improvements at Barts Health were CQC-driven. Professor Baker’s decision to carry out an unannounced inspection of North Middlesex, which had the worst A&E performance in the capital, sent shockwaves across the trust.

Kathy Niakan

Biologist

The publicity-shy scientist from the Francis Crick Institute became front-page news in February when she won permission to genetically modify human embryos for the first time in the UK. The gene-editing technique could offer the greatest insight yet into the earliest stages of human life and lead to major advances in understanding the causes of infertility and miscarriage. Dr Niakan also assisted a Newcastle University team in investigating the safety of IVF techniques to create “three-parent babies” free of mitochondrial disease.

Sir Sam Everington

GP

Possessed of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy and optimism, the East End GP remains a major player in health politics and has the ear of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. As chairman of Tower Hamlets clinical commissioning group, he is leading the drive to keep people out of hospital — and save the NHS’s time and money — by using technology to fast-track more meaningful conversations between GPs, patients and hospital consultants.

Lord Piot

Director, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

As one of the scientists who discovered the Ebola virus, in 1976 in Zaire, Professor Piot was vital in tackling the recent outbreak in west Africa that killed thousands. A truly global figure with a fascinating track record investigating infectious diseases, he previously worked for the United Nations and World Health Organisation. Lately, he has turned his attention to yellow fever, which kills 80,000 Africans a year, and concerns about a shortage of vaccine suppliers.

Dame Sally Davies

Chief Medical Officer

Dame Sally upped her warnings about the “antibiotics apocalypse”, saying it was already upon us, with 50,000 people dying globally from infections that the drugs cannot treat. She also sparked headlines earlier this year when she encouraged others to “do as I do” and think about the risk of cancer before having a glass of wine.

Sir Michael Jacobs

Infectious diseases consultant, Royal Free Hospital

After being invited to lunch with the Queen, Dr Jacobs was elevated to Sir Michael in the New Year’s honours list. The expert in infectious diseases at the Royal Free was called on once again to help Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey when she suffered another relapse from Ebola. His knowledge of the new drugs market and work for the World Health Organisation means UK patients are offered cutting-edge therapies as they fight for their lives.

Robert Bentley

Director of trauma, King’s College Hospital

His grand plan for a helipad on the roof of King’s College Hospital may have been delayed after a huge cost overrun, but he insists it will be a “real game-changer” for trauma patients flown from across south-east London and Kent. The oral and maxillofacial surgeon and expert in reconstructive surgery knows it will provide faster access to X-rays

and scans, earlier delivery of blood, and less movement of patients. The revised plans should better link the hospital’s emergency department to other wards.

Sir Harpal Kumar

Chief executive, Cancer Research UK

Knighted in the New Year’s honours list, Sir Harpal is the persuasive head of a charity spending £350 million a year on finding new treatments. This year saw the successful conclusion of a long-running campaign for plain packaging on cigarettes, hailed as a “monumental victory for public health”.

Aseem Malhotra

Founder, Action on Sugar

A highly articulate but controversial cardiologist whose “fat’s not bad, sugar is” drive has turned him into one of the country’s best-known health campaigners. Dr Malhotra’s lobbying, occasionally with Jamie Oliver, took him to No 10 receptions hosted by Samantha Cameron and has seen him named alongside anti-obesity activists such as Michelle Obama and Michael Bloomberg. The slimline embodiment of a no-sugar diet had his documentary, The Big Fat Fix, premiered in Parliament in July.

Gareth Davies

Medical director, London’s Air Ambulance

This year marked Dr Davies’s 20th as medical director of the capital’s emergency helicopter service. He continues to drive the NHS-funded charity forward, both in terms of medical innovation and coverage offered to patients suffering traumatic injury. January saw the launch of a second helicopter, allowing for more flying hours and the treatment of an additional 400 critically injured patients a year.

Gareth Davies, pictured with patient Francita and medical student John Reid
Nigel Pacquette

Oliver Johnson

Programme director, King’s Sierra Leone Partnership

The 30-year-old doctor began working in Sierra Leone in January 2013 to support the healthcare system in the west African nation but quickly found himself on the frontline of the Ebola outbreak. Based at the Connaught Hospital in the capital, Freetown, Dr Johnson became a familiar voice on TV and radio, setting out in stark terms the devastation caused by the virus, and his work helped to bring the epidemic to an end. Superiors in London marvel at his bravery, energy and dedication.

Tracey Batten

Chief executive, Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust

The steely Australian doctor is beginning to bring west London’s biggest and most important hospital trust under greater control but faces a struggle to match diminishing funding to increasing patient demand. She faced the challenge of seeing the trust lose an unfair dismissal case brought by pioneering surgeon Professor Nadey Hakim, which exposed the infighting within the kidney transplant team at Hammersmith Hospital.

Chandrima Biswas

Consultant obstetrician, Whittington Hospital

Now the editor-in-chief of The Pregnancy Encyclopaedia, an expert guide to every question likely to be asked by expectant mothers, Dr Biswas has a status stretching beyond the Whittington as she campaigns on the dangers of maternal obesity and carries out volunteer work in Africa to tackle deaths in childbirth.

Ben White

Campaigning junior doctor

Several leaders emerged from the profession during the bitter dispute over new contracts for junior doctors. Dr White, who dramatically quit as a trainee doctor on live TV, co-founded Justice for Health, which this summer won the right to judicially review Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s imposition of new terms. Other campaigning medics have included Dr Dagan Lonsdale, Dr Reena Aggarwal and Dr Janis Burns.

Matthew Hopkins

Chief executive, Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust

During the junior doctors’ strike, the BBC Today programme parked its outside broadcast caravan in front of Queen’s Hospital in Romford and it was left to Hopkins to bravely explain the difficulties the action was causing for patients and hospital managers — while making clear that the juniors had the support of the majority of colleagues. He demonstrated this by buying strikers hot drinks and chocolate bars as they froze on the picket line.

Anne Rainsberry

London director, NHS England

The woman in charge of the health service in London since 2012 was made incident director for the whole NHS as it prepared for — and emerged relatively unscathed from — the junior doctors’ strikes. Rainsberry will make occasional forays from her Victoria headquarters to the frontline to dish out praise to hospitals able to launch innovative projects while coping with the endless influx of patients and shrinking budgets.

Bobby Gaspar

Immunologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital

His pioneering work in immunology has transformed the lives of children who two decades ago would have had no lives at all. With stem cell gene therapy still in its infancy, Professor Gaspar is at the forefront of the field and, with many brilliant colleagues at GOSH, is pursuing what one patient described as “the future of medicine”.

Nazneen Rahman

Scientist, Institute of Cancer Research

A shining star among the white coats and laboratories of the ICR, Professor Rahman is one of the UK’s leading cancer researchers in breast, ovarian and childhood cancers. She is head of the cancer genetics clinical unit at the Royal Marsden and of the genetics division at the ICR, its academic partner. She possesses a film-star aura when appearing on medical panels, discussing subjects such as the 100,000 Genomes Project. She also writes songs.

Professor Nazneen Rahman: Scientist, Institute of Cancer Research
Rebecca Reid

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