Prof Sir Michael Rawlins is the founding Chairman of the National Institute for (Health and) Clinical Excellence (NICE), and is an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Sir Michael studied Medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital and graduated with numerous prizes and distinctions in 1965. In 1973 he was appointed Ruth and Lionel Jacobson Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Newcastle on Tyne, and Consultant Physician / Clinical Pharmacologist to the Newcastle NHS Hospitals. He became a member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) in 1980. Whilst a CSM member he chaired the Sub-committee on Safety, Efficacy and Adverse Reactions, and was a member of the committees on Toxicity and Health Technology Assessment. He chaired the CSM from 1993-98, and the Advisory Group on the Misuse of Drugs from 1998-2008; and was also Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Policy Research from 1994-2001. In 1995-6 he chaired the Leeds Acute Services Review Task Force and from 1999-2003 was Chairman of the Committee of Professors of Clinical Pharmacology. He has published over 300 articles and book chapters as well as being the principle author on several official publications.
Since Sir Michael’s appointment to NICE in 1999 he has served on many Department of Health committees, addressing a wide range of topics, including Patient Benefits, Clinical Effectiveness, Health Innovation, Inclusion Health, Quality, and Ministerial Industry Strategy. He is an advisor to RAND Health, the Institute for Neuro-Disability, Guys-St Thomas’s Biomedical Research Centre, and the Ministry of Defence Military Medicine Group. He chairs the New Therapies Scrutiny Group for the Medical Research Council.
Sir Michael has been awarded many honorary doctorates and fellowships, both in the UK and abroad. He has delivered many eponymous lectures, including the Bradshaw, Withering and Harveian lectures at the Royal College of Physicians. In 2010 he received the Galen Medal of the Society of Apothecaries and in 2011 a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. He was knighted in 1999. He will become President of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2012. Recently he chaired the Academy of Medical Sciences Working Group which produced the important report on the future of medical research in the UK entitled “A New Pathway for the Regulation and Governance of Health Research”.