Meet the Core SAIL Team Members

David is Director of the Administrative Data Research Centre (ADRC) Wales, an £8million investment by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of its Big Data initiative and is Deputy Director of The Farr Institute CIPHER funded by a consortium of top UK research funders led by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

David is the lead of the SAIL Databank, an internationally recognised data linkage resource formed from a wide variety of routinely collected data from across Wales.

David is Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA) and past Chairman and current Director of MediWales, a membership organisation representing the medical technology sector of Wales. David has received research grants and consultancy contracts valuing over £40million.

Ronan is Professor of Public Health at Swansea University, Honorary Consultant in Public Health with Public Health Wales NHS Trust and an adjunct professor at Monash University, Australia.

He is Director of the Farr Institute Centre for Improvement of Population Health through E-records Research (CIPHER), Director of the National Centre for Population Health and Wellbeing Research, Co-Director of the DECIPHer UK Public Health Research Centre of Excellence and Co-Director of the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank, the national privacy protecting research infrastructure for Wales. The focus of Ronan’s research is the use of routine data in cohorts, trials and in the evaluation of natural experiments and complex interventions. He led the development of the total population Wales Electronic Cohort for Children as a platform for the evaluation of interventions and policies. He is also involved in linking data to support a number of UK cohorts and cross cohort initiatives, including leading on the development of the analysis platform for the MRC's Dementias Research Platform UK that will bring together data from 33 cohorts, utilising the UK Secure eResearch Platform (UKSeRP).

Charlotte is the Administrator for SAIL. The purpose of the role is to assist the SAIL team to effectively manage the administrative aspects of the SAIL Databank project. A key part of the role is the management and facilitation of a variety of SAIL related groups, committees and the organisation and administration of project events such as user knowledge sharing sessions and provision of administrative support across the SAIL project.

Caroline is a health data scientist with many years’ experience in the NHS, academia and industry. Caroline joined the SAIL Databank in 2006 as a Senior Research Analyst, and her responsibilities include data quality, documentation, supporting projects and providing guidance on using the SAIL system. She works with researchers to articulate their research requirements of the SAIL Databank and supports the training and development of analysts.

Chris is Senior Systems Developer for the SAIL Databank. He is responsible for the management of the technical infrastructure supporting the SAIL Databank and associated information products and services running on the IBM AIX DB2 platform. Chris led the design, development and implementation of SAIL Info Central and the SAIL Gateway.

Chris is a member of a number of the major SAIL committees (SAIL Advisory Board, SAIL Management Board and SAIL Data Management Committee).

Kerina is an Associate Professor of Health Informatics. She has led the development of proposals to extend the SAIL system and to secure research grants, including being a major contributor to the successful bid to become a centre of excellence in health informatics (CIPHER – Centre for the Improvement of Population Health through E records Research). She is a lead contributor to the design and implementation of the Governance framework in place in the SAIL system and leads the Governance workstream for the UK network of health e-research centres of excellence.

She is actively involved in various health informatics studies, including cancer outcomes with UK Biobank and the development of disease registers. Kerina leads the research programme for the flagship UK MS Register project and is actively publishing high quality peer-reviewed research articles.

Julie Kennedy is an experienced project and business manager. She spent fifteen years as an NHS IM&T project manager, working on regional and national projects with an eHealth focus. Joining Swansea University in 2010 as a Business Development Manager, she successfully developed a number of successful University / local industry collaboration projects and secured Welsh Government funding for two spinout projects (Health Cloud CIRP and Life Science Wales KEP). Within the SAIL Databank team Julie’s role is to manage the business workflow processes, ensuring that projects progress through their lifecycles from initial scoping to final closure and post project evaluation.

Cynthia is the Information Governance Manager for SAIL. The role involves taking responsibility for the information governance arrangements for SAIL from data protection issues within data provider organisations to issues relating to publication of research findings.

A key part of this role is the operation of the Collaboration Review System (CRS) including managing the Information Governance Review Panel. She also works to facilitate relationships with new data supplying organisations and undertakes the necessary information governance activities required for data sharing. Cynthia is also responsible for co-ordinating the programme of information governance audits.

Arfon is the Data Manager for Administrative Data Research Centre (ADRC) Wales projects. His role involves assisting projects to develop data extracts that meet their specific requirements. His background is in application development and data analysis of Health, Government, and Educational data using SQL.

Sarah is a Senior Data Scientist for the SAIL Databank. She works with researchers to define their research requirements and provides support regarding the use of health data within research projects. She contributes analytical support to a range of research projects and also contributes to increasing knowledge and awareness about the quality of data within the datasets held by the SAIL Databank. She joined the SAIL Databank in 2014; prior to this she was employed in the NHS in England and in Wales in roles relating to Public Health and Information Management.

Luca is a Research Analyst working for the SAIL Analyst Team, and his responsibilities include: creating double encrypted views for users tailored to each project; developing reusable code using procedures, documentation and supporting projects that use the SAIL Databank. Luca’s background is in business analytics and industrial engineering.

Dan is a Senior Data Scientist, and his responsibilities include data quality, documentation, supporting projects and providing guidance on using the SAIL system. He works with researchers to articulate their research requirements of the SAIL Databank and supports the training and development of analysts. He provides the user view to all SAIL system developments. Dan’s background as a software engineer drives him to develop better tools for linked data analysis, which includes leading the International Health Data Linkage Network Technical Working Group.

Dan is a member of all of the major SAIL committees.

Simon is a systems architect with many years’ experience in the NHS and academia. He is the Chief Technology Officer of a large team of talented, diverse skilled software developers. Simon leads the innovation, design, development and implementation of all SAIL technical system developments. He is responsible for delivering the technical workstream for Swansea as part of the UK network of health e-research centres of excellence.

Simon is a member of all of the major SAIL committees.

Ting Wang has been working in health related research for almost 10 years, initially working as an experimental psychologist in which she obtained a PhD. She has bridged out into population health research since 2014, working as a research analyst in Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL), at Swansea University. Since then she has been working with multi-disciplinary teams across Welsh health boards and academics on collaborative research projects investigating various population health related issues, such as treatment procedure evaluation, service demand and evaluation. She is specialised in data analysis and linkage, and currently working towards an MSc in Health Data Science at Swansea University.

Ashley is a Senior Research Analyst with experience of working on a variety of data linkage and research projects. He has a background in computing and various research disciplines which have evolved over time with his experience of working with anonymised data within SAIL Databank since 2008, as well as other data from the UK nations, and as part of projects with collaborators including those in the FARR Institute, Prudent Healthcare Intelligence Hub, ADRC, MS Register, IPDLN and with the NHS. He works with analysts and researchers in both the development and pursuit of their project’s and research, and supports their continued development and training.

Lee is a Data Manager for ADRC-Wales and is responsible for data acquisition and database administration. He comes from a software development background working for both private and public sectors.

Arron has been with SAIL Databank since 2011 as a Research Analyst. He graduated from Swansea University with a BSc Physics and an MSc Computer Science. His research focus is population studies in Epilepsy and Cardiovascular risk management. Arron is a keen machine learning enthusiast and is particularly interested in applying such techniques to genetics and natural language processing. Arron is currently a PhD candidate at Swansea University Medical School where his thesis explores the analysis of big data and machine learning in Epilepsy research.

Huw Collins is a recent addition to the team. He has 25 years experience in various accounting roles spent, for the most part, in the Automotive industry culminating in this welcome career change. Currently working towards an MSc in Health Data Science at Swansea University.

David is a senior data analyst and software developer for the SAIL team. With skills and expertise in software development using best practices in the areas of code and database design, documentation, and testing. David is responsible for developing software and methods that will enable different approaches to research using SAIL.

David has many years’ experience as a software contractor working in the Health, Finance and Manufacturing sectors building bespoke business applications. His previous contract was with the NHS developing an application for the pharmacy team.

Muhammad is a Research Analyst for the SAIL Databank. He works on the automation process for data quality checks for SAIL datasets.

He recently received his PhD degree in electrical and electronic engineering (nanoscale device simulation) from Swansea University, UK, before which he was working in the University IT business, mainly web developing.

Geoff is a Software Developer and Senior Data Analyst for projects using the SAIL Databank. His role involves creating and improving data systems used in the SAIL Databank and assisting projects to develop data extracts that meet their specific requirements. His background is a software developer for the Welsh Government and other public and private sector organisations. He also has many years’ experience of performing data analysis of Government and Educational data using SQL queries.