Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, Liam’s expertise lies in the clinical assessment and characteristics of “difficult asthma”- asthma that is difficult to control with standard of care treatments. This includes identifying and managing poor adherence to therapy, treatment resistant disease and often other comorbid disease which can make clinical assessment challenging.
Liam is particularly interested in using disease stratification – separating a patient population into distinct groups based on the different disease characteristics they possess – to come up with personalised treatment approaches and interventions for individuals with severe asthma.
He hopes that by facilitating the widespread linkage of secondary and tertiary care datasets to primary care records across the UK, our programme will make it easier for researchers to gain a better understanding of:
- Disease trajectory – how a condition, disease or illness changes over time;
- Comorbid disease – conditions, diseases or illnesses that occur at the same time;
- Benefits of early intervention with target-specific therapies;
- Predictors of treatment response; and
- Barriers that delay or prevent access to healthcare
Outside of Inflammation and Immunity, Liam also leads RASP-UK (the Medical Research Council’s Medical Research Council UK Refractory Stratification Programme) who have substantial experience in developing both Phase II and Phase III clinical trials, from concept and design through to data analysis.
“The UK is already a global leader in the use of routine clinical data sources to deliver patient benefit – this programme provides a unique opportunity to further enhance that capability in respiratory and other inflammatory diseases to address future critical research questions”
Read Liam Heaney’s professional profile
