Dr Harry Ahmed

Overview

I am a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Epidemiology and Director of the Academic Fellows Scheme at the Division of Population Medicine, Cardiff University School of Medicine, and a practicing GP at Penygraig Surgery, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

My research interests are common infections and the safe and effective use of medication, especially antibiotics.

My research uses large electronic health data-sets to:

1) Describe the epidemiology of common infections in primary care and the relationships between acute infection and chronic conditions.

2) Assess the impact of different strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of common infections on patient outcomes, NHS use, and  antibiotic resistance.

3) Improve the safe and effective use of medications by quantifying clinically important adverse outcomes of commonly prescribed drugs, with a particular focus on antibiotics.

My current work is funded by Health and Care Research Wales through an NIHR Advanced Fellowship and investigates the relationship between infection, antibiotic treatment, and serious bleeding in people who use oral anticoagulant drugs. The aim is to understand whether infection and/or specific antibiotics affect oral anticoagulant drug action and alter the risk of a serious bleed.

My previous work was funded by Health and Care Research Wales through an NIHR Doctoral Fellowship and investigated the impact of different antibiotic prescribing strategies on outcomes of urinary tract infection in older people. I used anonymised linked general practice, hospital, mortality, and demographic data on ~750,000 people from England provided by the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD).

I am a Co-Investigator on the NIHR HTA funded PriMUS Study (developing a tool to help GPs diagnose men with lower urinary tract symptoms more accurately), and the NIHR HTA funded BOPPP study (randomised trial of beta-blockers for prophylaxis of oesophageal varices). I am Co-lead of the Infections work-package for the Health and Care Research Wales funded Wales Centre for Primary and Emergency Care Research (PRIME Centre Wales).

I am the Director of the Academic Fellows Scheme, a Welsh Government funded leadership role that recruits, supports and mentors newly qualified GPs for two-years and provides opportunities for research, teaching, and postgraduate study.

I am the Associate Theme lead for the Population Health research theme for the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences.

My teaching roles include evidence-based medicine teaching, co-leading the infections module of the Population Health Intercalated BSc, Supervision of Masters in Public Health students, and Personal Tutor to Medical Students.