PhD by prior publication

Brian MacKenna

This bursary will support me to obtain a PhD. Obtaining a PhD will help me achieve two aspirations.  

Firstly, developing my own personal research programme. I led the discovery that a single small feature in electronic health record software impacts prescribing choices that costs the NHS an extra £11 million per year. We did thorough analysis and openly shared our findings which resulted in this problem being fixed, changing prescriptions for many people and saving the NHS a substantial sum of money. Subsequently, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic I have published further analysis on the effect of software on prescribing in the area of prescribing safety. Due to competing interests in the pandemic, I have not been able to dedicate enough time to undertaking further research about the impact and developing solutions to the problems software may cause, nor indeed harness the best aspects of software to improve patient’s medicines use. By undertaking a PhD in the subject, this will allow me to focus on the topic to develop a single coherent theme of work and use this to support future research in this area in the future. 

Secondly, supporting others to develop their research skills. I now lead a large team of researchers in a university and I would like to expand it further by recruiting and supporting PhD students. Unfortunately as I do not have a PhD myself I am unable to supervise students. Obtaining a PhD with the help of this bursary would enable me to supervise PhD students (including pharmacy professionals) and support them to develop their own research careers.