Speakers | Asian Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR)

Respiratory Medicine Today Editors

Professor Christine McDonald

Editor-in-Chief, Respiratory Medicine Today; Director of the Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, Austin Health; Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne; Medical Director of the Institute for Breathing and Sleep; Fellow, Academy of Health and Medical Sciences; and Chair of the COPD National Program, Lung Foundation Australia.

As a practising respiratory physician, Christine McDonald has broad clinical and research interests. She is a member of the COPD-X Guidelines Committee, which regularly reviews and updates guidance for best practice care of patients with COPD in Australia and New Zealand through the Lung Foundation Australia COPD-X Guidelines.

Dr Kerry Hancock

GP representative, Respiratory Medicine Today; Executive Member, COPD National Program, Lung Foundation Australia; Chair, RACGP Respiratory Medicine Specific Interest Network.

Kerry Hancock is a general practitioner in a group practice in outer metropolitan Adelaide, and has more than 30 years’ experience in clinical practice. She has a special interest in general practice-based respiratory medicine and has strong affiliations with Asthma Australia, the Asthma Foundation of South Australia, the National Asthma Council of Australia, Lung Foundation Australia, and the International Primary Care Respiratory Group. Dr Hancock’s active participation with these organisations has enabled her to be involved in the development of national primary care focused respiratory management guidelines, educational activities and the development of tools to assist GPs in the management of their patients with asthma and COPD.

Symposium presenters

Professor David Price

Respiratory Society Professor of Primary Care Respiratory Medicine at the University of Aberdeen, UK; Managing Director of the Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute, Singapore.

David Price is the founder and Managing Director of the Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute (Singapore), an independent, research-driven organisation established to cultivate initiatives, provide evidence and drive quality standards within the growing field of real-life, pragmatic and observational research. This dynamic organisation delivers pragmatic clinical trials and real-life database research across multiple geographies, including territories in the USA, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, such as Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, The Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and China. He is also Managing Director of Optimum Patient Care (Australia, Singapore and the UK), a science-based, social enterprise which focuses on disease registries and supporting care in primary and secondary care led by internationally recognised experts in all areas of respiratory medicine.

Professor Price was the founding President of the Respiratory Effectiveness Group, a not-for-profit, investigator-led initiative that uses an international collaborative approach to explore the optimum role of real-life research in informing clinical guidelines and improving patient care.

He is the Primary Care Respiratory Society Professor of Primary Care Respiratory Medicine at the University of Aberdeen (UK) and is a fellow of the European Respiratory Society (ERS). He is also a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) executive committee, the World Allergy Organization (WAO) Committee on Asthma, and the WAO Education Council.

Professor Price completed his medical degree at Cambridge University in 1984. He was previously Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of General Practice at the University of Adelaide, Australia and held an Honorary Chair at the University of East Anglia, UK.

He is extensively involved in respiratory and allergy research; his areas of special interest are ‘real-life’ effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions, clinical trial design, compliance, and patient attitudes to their disease. He is the author of more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and is responsible for approximately US$30 million in research and clinical development grants. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pragmatic and Observational Research and a member of the editorial board of several respiratory journals, including The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Professor Peter Barnes

Margaret-Turner Warwick Professor of Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute; Head of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London; and Honorary Consultant Physician at Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK.

Peter Barnes qualified at Cambridge and Oxford Universities (first class honours) and was appointed to his current post in 1987. He has published more than 1000 reviewed papers on asthma, COPD and related topics (h-index 156) and has written or edited more than 50 books. He is the seventh most highly cited researcher in the world and the most highly cited respiratory researcher in the world over the past 20 years.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007, the first respiratory researcher for over 150 years. He is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of global guidelines on COPD (GOLD). He also serves on the Editorial Board of more than 30 journals and is currently an Associate Editor of Chest, Journal of COPD Foundation, Respiratory Editor of PLoS Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of Up-to-Date Pulmonary Diseases.

Professor Barnes has given several prestigious lectures, including the Amberson Lecture at the American Thoracic Society, the Sadoul Lecture at the European Respiratory Society and the Croonian Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians, London. He has received honorary degrees from the Universities of Ferrara (Italy), Athens (Greece), Tampere (Finland), Leuven (Belgium) and Maastricht (Netherlands). He is a NIHR Senior Investigator, a Master Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and an elected member of Academia Europaea. He served as President of the European Respiratory Society 2013/14. He co-founded an Imperial spin-out company RespiVert, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson and has developed novel inhaled treatments for COPD and severe asthma.

Professor Wisia Wedzicha

Professor of Respiratory Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK.

Wisia Wedzicha is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK and Head of the Respiratory Clinical Science Division. She qualified from Somerville College, Oxford University and St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, University of London. She was elected as Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2013 and is a National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator. She received the Helmholtz International Fellow Award in 2014.

Professor Wedzicha has a major interest in the causes, mechanisms, impact and prevention of COPD exacerbations, and in the role of bacterial and viral infection in COPD exacerbations. She directs an active research group specialising in COPD exacerbations, and has published extensively on this topic.

Professor Wedzicha chaired the English Department of the Health Home Oxygen Clinical User Group, and was a member of the Guideline Development Group for the revision of the National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical Excellence (NICE) COPD Guidelines. In 2016, she was appointed as an Expert Adviser to the NICE Centre for Clinical Practice.

Professor Wedzicha was Editor-in-Chief of Thorax from 2002 to 2010, and is a member of the BioMed Central advisory board. She is currently Editor-in-Chief for the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. In addition, she is on the editorial boards of a number of international journals. She was the Lancet Ombudsman till 2014, Publications Director for the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and has also previously been ERS Guidelines Director.