Professor Hedley Emsley

Professional statement

Professor Hedley Emsley is a renowned consultant neurologist practising privately at the Greater Lancashire Hospital in Preston. His areas of expertise include vascular neurology, stroke, cerebrovascular disease (including small vessel disease, cerebral amyloid angiopathy), late-onset epilepsy, migraine and neurological disorders including Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Emsley graduated with an MBChB in 1996 from the University of Manchester. He undertook several junior doctor posts in the North West of England and at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London before becoming a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London (MRCP) in 1999. He then completed a PhD on inflammation and cytokine regulation in stroke, awarded in 2004, and undertook specialist training as a clinical lecturer in neurology at the Walton Centre for Neurology & Neurosurgery in Liverpool. Before becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (FRCP) in 2012, he obtained both the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in neurology and a postgraduate certificate in clinical education in 2008 (PGCTLCP with distinction). He was made a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in 2012.

Professor Emsley was appointed Consultant Neurologist with special interest in Stroke Neurology at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2008, and in 2014, he became the Clinical Director for Neurology at the Trust for three years. He has numerous external responsibilities including his current roles on the Epilepsy Research Institute’s Mortality, Morbidity and Risk Task Force, the Association of British Neurologists Advisory Group on Data and Devices, and on the Health Data Research UK (HDR-UK) North Executive Committee. Previous roles include co-chair for the Association of British Neurologists Stroke Advisory Group, clinical advisor to the Neurology Intelligence Collaborative, North West National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) advisory panel member for the Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme, and external examiner for the University College London Stroke MSc programme.

He took up his post as Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at Lancaster University in 2017 alongside his NHS role. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 academic outputs in all including articles in peer-reviewed medical journals, reports, book chapters and conference abstracts. He regularly engages in peer-review and editorial work. He is a chief investigator and a research supervisor on a range of NIHR portfolio studies in stroke and neurological disorders. He has extensive research collaborations and a number of research interests including cerebrovascular disease and its interface with other neurological disorders, inflammation, infection, novel mechanisms, targets, biomarkers and trials in cerebrovascular disease and other neurological disorders, as well as novel uses of routinely collected data. He also serves on Lancaster University’s Research Ethics Committee.

Current collaborations and projects include:

• work with academic partners on NHS England’s North West Secure Data Environment, a secure data and research analysis platform, including funding to support work on artificial intelligence related work on routinely collected data
• a collaboration with the Department of Health & Social Care using Hospital Episodes Statistics Data on neurological admissions, comorbidities, including work that has highlighted the prominence of cardiovascular disease as a comorbidity in epilepsy
• a forthcoming book chapter on Epilepsy in Older Adults in the new edition of leading reference in the field of geriatric care, Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology
• establishment of a Collaboration for Late Onset and Vascular Epilepsy Research (CLOVER) in the UK and with international partners
• work as part on the International Small Vessel Disease Network led by the University of Edinburgh to improve clinical SVD care