Advancements in Sepsis Management: Biomarker-Guided Antibiotic Therapy

Professor Bronwen Connolly

Bronwen Connolly is a critical care physiotherapist, and Senior Lecturer in Critical Care at Queen’s University Belfast.  She is the Chief Investigator of the NIHR HTA-funded MARCH trial, investigating the effectiveness of mucoactive drugs in acute respiratory failure, and leads the development of a core outcome set for trials of physical rehabilitation in critical illness.  Bronwen is the recipient of three previous NIHR Fellowships, and her research interests focus on acute respiratory and rehabilitation physiotherapy, the recovery, long-term outcome and survivorship of post critical illness patients, and clinical trial methodology around complex rehabilitation interventions.  Bronwen sits on the NIHR Critical Care National Specialty Group and the UK Critical Care Research Group.

 

Professor Paul Dark

Paul studied undergraduate physics and medicine. Graduating from The Manchester Medical School, he went on to study clinical academic surgery, emergency medicine and critical care at the Universities of Glasgow and Manchester in the UK, and at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

As MRC PhD Clinical Training Fellow, supervised by Professor Rod Little, he developed methods to transduce and study dynamic cardio-respiratory responses to tissue injury and haemorrhage. This work produced key evidence for the validation and refinement of minimally-invasive patient monitoring technologies including Doppler ultrasound and arterial pulse wave analysis systems.

He was appointed to his current clinical academic post at the University of Manchester in 2003, developing clinical services and academic practice in Critical Care Medicine at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (Salford Care Organisation). He developed and provides leadership for a programme of work, funded mainly by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), investigating the clinical and cost effectiveness of emerging molecular diagnostic technologies in the setting of sterile tissue injury and severe infections (sepsis) within both high and low resource healthcare settings internationally. Funded by NIHR Manchester BRC, NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Emergency and Acute Care and Innovate UK in partnership with industry, he also co-leads an ongoing programme of work developing novel technologies aimed at rapid point-of-care infection/sepsis theragnosis with the objective of optimising patient exposure to antimicrobial drugs.

Paul was NIHR Clinical Research Network's National Deputy Medical Director (2022 - 24). He provided strategic leadership for the development, delivery and accessibility of a large portfolio of national clinical research in NHS acute hospital settings and he represented NIHR internationally. As a former NIHR National Specialty Lead for Critical Care (2015-22), he served on NIHR's Urgent Public Health Research Advisory Group, providing expert advice on research priority for the Department of Health and Social Care and UK's Chief Medical Officers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is also Research Professor at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, providing strategic interdisciplinary leadership in global health and social justice.

: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-dark-33002722?lip
: @https://x.com/darknatter