The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has appointed Michael Rawlins as its chairman from 1 December 2014.
Rawlins, who will hold the post for three years, succeeds Gordon Duff who is stepping down after being elected principal of St Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford.
Rawlins was chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence from its launch in 1999 until 2013. He is currently chairman of UK Biobank — a UK research project tracking the health of 500,000 people to provide evidence about why some people develop life threatening or serious diseases such as stroke, diabetes and dementia.
Rawlins says it will be an honour to join the medicines safety regulator where his aim is to “provide an innovative, transparent and cost-efficient service to further protect and improve public health”.
Rawlins is a past chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and for 30 years was professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne when he was also consultant physician and consultant clinical pharmacologist to the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust.
