Digital Health Validation Lab

Professor David J Lowe

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Clinical Director of Innovation

Clinical Director, Innovation, University of Glasgow, Emergency Consultant at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow, and Clinical Director for Health Innovation for Scottish Government.

David has significant experience of creating the infrastructure and conditions to develop innovative devices, services, and solutions with a range of industry and academic partners both UK and worldwide. He is clinical lead for a number of projects with DHVL and previously iCAIRD including ensemble based AI techniques for COVID, osteoporosis as well as supporting evaluation and development of AI solutions across a range of imaging modalities. Developing collaborations between industry and academia to produce evidence to support decision making for adoption of innovative new technologies and solutions through application of digital health framework from NICE focusing on demonstrating clinical and cost effectiveness in addition to technical performance and acceptability.

He leads on range of projects including Dynamic COPD (support.nhscopd.scot) and OPERA (early diagnostic heart failure utilising AI). Such projects focus on developing AI/ML clinical decision support by embedding a data driven approach combined with patient co-management into clinical care pathways. David also established the EmQuire research group focusing on data, device, and decisions within Emergency Medicine. 

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Ammani Brown

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Portfolio Manager

Ammani joined the Digital Health Validation Laboratory in February 2024 as Portfolio Manager. Prior to this Ammani worked as a Senior Research Facilitator with NHS GGC R&D building up the ENT, Dental and Cardiovascular research portfolios. Then as Cardiovascular Research Nurse Lead with Glasgow’s Clinical Research Facility (CRF), GRI and QEUH, working with a team of dedicated research staff, NHS and UoG Investigators, R&I, Governance, Ethics and QA lead to deliver cardiovascular research safely and effectively in the NHS.
She holds a BA(Hons) in Nursing studies and a Public Health MSc both from Caledonian University.

Clea Du Toit

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DHVL Clinical Study and Data Coordinator

Before joining the DHVL team, Clea worked with Prof Padmanabhan as a HDRUK-funded research assistant and junior biostatistician at the School of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health at UofG. Clea is currently coordinating the oGRE Challenge, which brings together NHS clinicians and UofG data scientists to answer questions of public health importance. She holds an MSci (Hons) in pharmacology and MSc in precision medicine, both from the University of Glasgow. 

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Mr John Zurowski

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Senior Projects Manager

Senior Projects Manager – Digital Health Validation Lab – Living Laboratory Precision Medicine Programme (UKRI Strength in Places Fund)

John was appointed as Senior Projects Manager to the Digital Health Validation Lab (DHVL) in April 2023. He has extensive experience in the software development industry ranging from software engineering, team leading to project management. He has experience in a variety of sectors ranging from multimedia developments, embedded devices through to healthcare technology development, specifically in the medical imaging domain. Before joining the Living, Lab John was involved in the iCAIRD consortium focussed on creating an eco-system for healthcare AI development and evaluation within Scotland. Prior to iCAIRD John had a role in product management at Canon Medical Research Europe looking at opportunities for Canon Medical to diversify into sectors adjacent to its core medical imaging business.

John’s current role is focussed on delivering a sustainable operational model for the services that the DHVL plans to deliver.

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Joanna Fearnside

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Projects Officer

Projects Officer – Digital Health Validation Lab – Living Laboratory Precision Medicine Programme (UKRI Strength in Places Fund)

Joanna was appointed Project Officer for DHVL in June 2023. She brings to the role a wealth of skills and knowledge ranging from procurement, new product development, marketing, project coordination through to general business administration. She has worked both in the commercial sector as well as the NHS – this experience will be invaluable for her to manage working relationships with both our clinical as well as our industrial partners and clients. Her experience working with NHS GGCs strategic recovery group has given her a particularly good insight into some of the challenges being faced by the NHS in general.  Her approach to work is pragmatic, results oriented, self-motivated, and highly organised. She has currently embarked on a course of study which she is hoping to apply during the course of her work at the Living Lab.

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Dr Ed Hutchinson

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Head of Project Delivery, Living Lab

University of Glasgow - Living Laboratory Precision Medicine Programme (UKRI Strength in Places Fund)

Ed was appointed as Head of Project Delivery for the Living Laboratory Programme in October 2021. Prior to this he worked for 16years in Scottish Enterprise (SE) - Scotland's main economic development agency as strategy lead for Precision Medicine and Advanced Therapy programmes. He also worked closely with Scotland’s Life Science Industry Leadership Group as a member of its Innovation & Commercialisation Workstream helping to increase interaction between industry & NHS Scotland.

Ed completed an MBA with the Open University in 2013 through distance learning. Before joining SE, Ed was Outsourcing Manager (Chemistry R&D) with ProStrakan (2002-5), and a Research and Development Chemist with Organon Laboratories (1997-2002). Ed held post-doctoral research fellowships at Sheffield and Oxford Universities and has a PhD in BioOrganic Chemistry from Exeter University. His undergraduate years were at Durham University where he graduated a BSc Hons in Chemistry in 1988.

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Dr Hartesh Battu

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Clinical Innovation Fellow

Hartesh is a Clinical Innovation Fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Digital Health Validation Lab. He graduated in Medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 2016 in addition to an intercalated Bachelor of Medical Science Degree in International Public Health Policy in 2013. He is a GP and has broad past clinical experience across several specialties including emergency medicine, spinal injuries rehabilitation, paediatrics, and obstetrics & gynaecology.

He is currently working on validating a novel contactless optical stethoscope which can help to diagnose valvular heart disease. He is also working with Healthy.io to validate a smartphone-based home urine self-testing kit to detect early-stage kidney disease in patients who have diabetes.

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Dr Sean Duncan

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Clinical Innovation Fellow

Sean graduated from the University of Newcastle in 2016, he has 7 years clinical experience in the UK and New Zealand. He has recently completed his professional exams and training in Internal Medicine. Sean has an interest in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and all things Oncology. He aspires to develop skills in innovation and research in order to be impactful in the development and integration of cancer treatments. Sean's main project is RADICAL which is using chest x-ray analysis software from qure.ai to detect signs of cancer. This study is part of a national priority to improve cancer diagnostic pathways.

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Dr Gowsikan Jeyakumar

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Clinical Innovation Fellow

Gowsikan is Medical Doctor working as a Clinical Innovation Fellow for the Digital Health Validation Laboratory at the University of Glasgow. He is currently spending his clinical time in the Emergency Department at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH). He graduated with his Medical Degree in 2020 from the University of Dundee along with an intercalated Bachelor of Medical Science Degree (BMSc) in Anatomy in 2017. He has worked numerous roles in the NHS with his most recent being a Clinical Fellow in Major Trauma, and Orthopaedics at the QEUH. His interests lie within Imaging, Radiology and Orthopaedics. 

Gowsikan's main current research focus is working in partnership with Qure.ai Technologies Ltd on a project titled Assess the Clinical Effectiveness in Prioritising CT Heads (ACcEPT). He is evaluating how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support prioritisation of reporting non-contrast CT head examinations, highlighting to radiologists of scans which require an urgent report.

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Dr Stewart Rodney

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Clinical Innovation Fellow

Stewart is a medical doctor working as a clinical innovation fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Digital Health Validation Laboratory. He is currently also spending time in a clinical role within the Emergency Department at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2019 having completed an intercalated BSc in Infectious Diseases before working in NHS Tayside, in Wellington New Zealand and then most recently in cardiology in NHS GG&C. He has an interest in anaesthetics, digital health, and expedition medicine.

Stewart is currently working on projects looking into the use of portable low magnetic field MRI scanners in acute stroke with Hyperfine. He is also involved with work evaluating a wearable chest wall device to collect respiratory waveform data in a toxicology and general anaesthetic population in collaboration with Pneumowave. He is also involved in work evaluating the role of large language models in medicine.

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Dr Maggie Rostron

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Clinical Research Fellow

Maggie joined the Digital Health Validation Laboratory in November 2022 as a clinical research fellow. Prior to this her research had been on pharmaceutical & intervention trials within Glasgow’s Clinical Research Facility focusing on cardiovascular health and clinical research within the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) focusing on COVID-19. She also works as a general internal medicine specialist registrar at the QEUH, with a specialist interest in hypertension and digital health.

Maggie graduated with a BSc (Hons) in neuroscience from the University of Glasgow in 2008 before going on to study medicine.

Maggie is currently working on projects including OPTIMA-BP: Empowering Patients in Managing Blood Pressure, which aims to look at the use of home blood pressure monitoring with the support of an internet-based educational portal, and a contactless optical stethoscope to assess its ability to detect heart murmurs.

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