- Birmingham Surgical Trials Consortium
Tom is Director of Birmingham Surgical Trials Consortium (BiSTC). The BiSTC is funded by the Royal College of Surgeons of England to develop new surgical clinical trials, widening participation in trials and train the trialists of the future.
- Birmingham Centre for Observational and Prospective Studies
This new unit was established in 2019 and Tom co-leads it with Dr Laura Magill. The Birmingham Centre for Observational and Prospective Studies (BiCOPS) aims to provide centralised guidance and practical support to groups of researchers coming together to undertake non-randomised prospective research, including large scale national and international clinical snapshot audits and cohort studies.
- Clinical Research - Grants
In the past 10 years Tom has been awarded £18.54M as the chief investigator of 7 major NIHR portfolio surgical projects to benefit patients through improved surgical care; 5 are multicentre RCTs and two for the development of a surgical device. He is also a co-applicant on 23 further grants totalling £58.72M.
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Tom’s specialist clinical interest is in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). He was Chief Investigator of the NIHR Research for Public Benefit (RfPB) funded ACCURE-UK feasibility trial. This has been followed more recently with the NIHR EME-funded ACCURE-UK 2 trial, which is the UK arm of an international RCT being conducted alongside colleagues at Academisch Medisch Centrum, Amsterdam. ACCURE-UK 2 is exploring the clinical effectiveness of therapeutic appendicectomy to reduce disease activity in Ulcerative Colitis.
In addition to this clinical research, Tom previously chaired the Inflammatory Bowel Disease sub-committee of the Association of Coloproctology of GB&I (ACPGBI) and the National Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Advisory Group of the Royal College of Surgeons & ACPGBI. He has been an invited clinician stakeholder in a variety of clinical guideline update groups, both in the UK and Europe.
- Surgical Site Infection (SSI)
When a senior registrar, Tom was the Chief Investigator of the ROSSINI (Reduction of Surgical Site Infection using a Novel Intervention, 2008-13) trial He has been involved in many other SSI trials including Bluebelle, FALCON, CHEETAH and MARLIN over the years and directly led the SUNRRISE (senior applicant) and ROSSINI2 (chief investigator) trials. ROSSINI 2 was the first multi-arm, multi-stage (MAMS) interventional trial funded in surgery and in its first iteration recruited over 5,300 patient from 53 hospitals. It has recently been awarded a further £1.1M to fund an extension phase which will explore the clinical effectiveness of two different interventions in abdominal surgery, via the existing delivery network.
This led on to the multi-speciality ROSSINI-Platform trial, which was funded in 2024 and is the largest interventional trial funded in surgery at £10.24M and nearly 26,000 patients. Tom sat on the NICE Guidelines Committee (NG125) for SSI.
- International research networks
Tom is chair of the European Society of Coloproctology (ESCP) Research Committee and previously led the Cohort Studies Subcommittee. He has delivered multiple international studies and audits, which have together collected outcomes data from over 20,000 individual patients undergoing operations in over 400 surgical units across 54 countries. He sits on the executive of the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery which is based in Birmingham.
Tom is one of the three Health and Care Research Directors within the newly formed Regional Research Delivery Network (RRDN) for the West Midlands. He was previously National Specialty Lead [NSL] for surgery within the NIHR Clinical Research Network.
In terms of external roles, He chairs two NIHR trial steering committees (TSCs), sits on a further six TSCs and two data monitoring committees.
- Trainee-centric research collaboratives
Research collaboratives: After helping found the West Midlands Research Collaborative, Tom has have spoken and published extensively on the collaborative research model, and helped many new collaboratives to establish in multiple specialities at all levels, in the UK and overseas.
The impact of wound-edge protection devices on surgical site infection (ROSSINI Trial)