The Team
Mr David Birnie
Dean of the Faculty
David is a Consultant Orthodontist and Associate Medical Director (Redevelopment) at Portsmouth in the UK. He is an elected member of the RCSEd Dental Council and, as Dean, an ex officio member of College Council. He is the co-author of a graphical decision support system for cephalometric analysis and planning for orthognathic surgery, OPALImage (see http://www.cix.co.uk/~felix/Opal/ (opens in new window)). He was in the first cohort of DMI students and graduated in 2002 and took up the post of Dean in 2005.
Ms Alice Breton
Director of the Faculty
Alice's first role in postgraduate health informatics education was in 1997, working with a team to establish a distance blended learning postgraduate medical informatics programme in NZ. She started contributing to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh online programme in 2001. She joined the Faculty of Health Informatics in 2002 and took up the position of Director in 2003. She is interested in all aspects of healthcare informatics, but particularly information retrieval and management, research and identifying and using quality research and patient informatics. She has an ongoing interest in the educational aspects of online, flexible and distance learning. Alice lives in and works from New Zealand.
Dr Howard Leicester
Head of Research and Development
Howard has 20 years' experience as researcher and lecturer within Health Informatics, having gained his PhD from the City University, London, and worked at UCL, St Thomas' and Moorfields Eye Hospitals. He joined the Faculty in July 2007 and oversees strategic development and expansion of the Faculty.
Ms Laura Vermeulen
Faculty Manager
Laura oversees the day to day running of the Faculty office, online programmes as well as liaising with students and tutors. She is involved in the development of the Faculty’s virtual learning environment and implements the strategic developments and policies of the FHI Board.
Ms Ashley Stevenson
Programme Administrator
Ashley assists with the administration of the Health Informatics and Health Information Governance online programmes run jointly with the University of Edinburgh as well as our legacy programmes run in partnership with Bath University. She is also responsible for administrating our CPD modules and provides help desk support for the British Orthodontic Society programmes hosted by the Faculty.
Ms Julie Melville
Programme Administrator
Julie assists with the
administration of the Diploma in Remote and Offshore Medicine online programme and processing the Faculty's financial transactions and student payments. In addition to this she provides help desk support for the College's surgical ePortfolio.
Consultants and Associates
Dr Andrew Lamb
Director of Web Services, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
Andrew was originally a GP in Edinburgh and now lives in the Pyrenees, from where he develops and maintains a host of scripting and database services on the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh web servers. A large part of his time is devoted to work for the Faculty and the development of our eLogbooks, ePortfolio and advanced learning management system.
Professor Angus Wallace
ePortfolio Adviser
Angus is Professor of Orthopaedics and Accident Surgery at Nottingham University. He is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Nottingham City Hospital and the Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham with a particular interest in elbow and shoulder surgery and sports medicine. Angus, with Andrew Lamb, has been principally responsible for the design and development of the innovative eLogbook, now the ePortfolio www.elogbook.org (opens in new window), available for all nine surgical disciplines and used by over 3,500 surgeons in the UK. Angus was a founder member of the Faculty of Health Informatics and was its first Dean from 2000 - 2005.
Middle East Representatives
The Faculty also has two representatives in the Middle East who provide support for Faculty activities in this area: Ramin Moghaddam in Iran, and Khaled Ghandour in the UAE.