Donnan, Peter

Peter Donnan is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Medical School Division of Population Health Sciences within the Medical Research Institute, University of Dundee. He has 30 years’ experience in the design and analysis of Health Services and Population Research observational studies as well as randomised controlled trials of drugs (steroids in Bell’s Palsy, NEJM, 2007) as well as public health interventions (screening for breast cancer, The Lancet, 1990, Football Fans In Training, The Lancet, 2014) and informatics (DQIP, NEJM 2016).

 He leads the Dundee Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit (DEBU) and co-leads the Tayside Clinical Trials Unit (TCTU) which has UKCRC registration and successfully runs 30 clinical trials with income of approximately £3M per year. He has also carried out extensive population record-linkage research on drug safety, adherence and management of long term conditions using Tayside’s and Scotland’s unique prescribing population databases and is the author of over 200 publications (h-index 48, m-index 1.42), as well as an investigator on research projects to a total of over £32 million.

 He has developed a number of prognostic algorithms, most notably predicting Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) in people with type 2 diabetes (Diabetes Care, 2006), and Chief Scientist Office funded algorithm to predict risk of emergency admissions in primary care (PEONY) with a view to developing cost-effective interventions for long term conditions (Archives Internal Medicine, 2008). An NIHR HTA-funded study has developed aids to clinical decision making with abnormal liver function tests in primary care. He is senior author of a study to predict outcomes for those admitted to hospital with Acute Pancreatitis using health informatics across Scotland. 

 He has supervised 16 PhD and MSc students and externally examined PhD theses across the UK. He has developed Master’s level modules in clinical trials and provides a record linkage analysis module for the Dundee MPH (15 students) as well as the Scottish-wide Stratified Medicine and Pharmacological Innovation MSc (35 students).

 In 2004, Prof. Donnan was invited to become a member of the New Drugs Committee of the Scottish Medicines Consortium which seeks to advise Area and Drug Therapeutics Committees across Scotland regarding the cost-effectiveness of new drugs and continues in this work with expertise in indirect comparisons, missing data and survival analysis in trials.