Professor John Marriott BSc (Hons) PhD FRPharmS FHEA

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 2002
• Professional Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (2000)
• Member of the British Pharmacological Society (& Clinical Section) 1988
• PhD Vascular Pharmacology 1985
• Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (FRPharmS)
• General Pharmaceutical Council registrant (formally RPS) 1980
• BSc (Hons) Pharmacy 1979

John Marriott gained a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacy from Aston Pharmacy School in 1979. After completing a pre-registration post with Boots the Chemists he registered as a Pharmaceutical Chemist in 1980 and worked extensively in the community sector for a range of independent and multiple Pharmacy contractors. Significant professional experience was gained within the NHS hospital sector holding a variety of appointments up to Chief Pharmacist level in a large district and general teaching Trust. He was a registered pre-registration pharmacist tutor in this role.

He has significant experience of scientific research, completing a PhD in experimental vascular pharmacology at Aston University and he also held a British Heart Foundation Fellowship at Birmingham Medical School examining the effects of hypoxia on vascular muscle contractility.

After leaving the NHS he joined the academic staff of Aston Pharmacy School as a lecturer, senior lecturer and then Professor of Clinical Pharmacy in 2008. He also held the posts of Director of Postgraduate Programmes and Head of the School during this period and was the Chair of the University Ethics Committee.

In 2011 he joined the staff at the College of Medicine and Dentistry as the Professor of Clinical Pharmacy in order to develop new pharmaceutical initiatives.

He has a variety of roles outside the University: he is currently  Chair of a major West Midlands NHS Research Ethics Committee, a member of the British National Formulary for Children Formulary Committee and a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Assembly.

John was Director of the Institute of Clinical Sciences from August 2022-August 2023.

John contributes to all years of the MPharm Pharmacy programme and to the Pharmacy PGT programmes.

• MPharm Pharmacy (4-year)
• Pharmacy Postgraduate Taught Programmes

John currently has doctoral students studying in the following projects:

• Investigation of repeated missed medication doses in secondary care: incidence, reasons and therapeutic implications
• Allergy labels in electronic prescribing & therapeutic practice
• Penicillin allergy de-labelling and antimicrobial stewardship
• Detection and management of non-adherence in severe asthma
• Evaluation of the use of cefuroxime as a prophylactic antibiotic in obese pregnant women undergoing caesarean section
• Evaluating barriers and facilitators to pharmacist and physiotherapist independent prescribing
• A multimodal approach to improving paediatric antimicrobial stewardship
• Factors that affect smoking cessation medication adherence behaviours and their role in the treatment of tobacco addiction
• Assessing the impact of using augmented reality on patients’ beliefs and adherence to inhaled corticosteroids in asthma

John is interested in supervising research projects in the following areas:

• Pharmaceutical Care
• Clinical Pharmacy
• Medicines Adherence
• Paediatric Medicines Use
• Novel Paediatric Formulations
• Pharmaceutical (and inter-professional) Education

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact John on the contact details above, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email mds-gradschool@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Research Themes

• Paediatric medicines use
• Barriers to novel medicines development (in paediatrics)
• Predicting and evaluating medicines adherence
• Risk in pharmaceutical systems
• Optimisation of antibiotics use
• Toolkits to optimise prescribing
• Drug allergy labelling

Research Activity

Measures to identify and improve poor medicines adherence. Research themes in partnership with pharmaceutical industry are evaluating the relationship between patient mood cycles and medicines adherence with an intention to optimise therapeutic outcomes. The research aims to test and understand which patients are likely to respond to medications with the aim to equip the Healthcare professionals with appropriate information not only to provide their duty of ensuring patients take their medication as agreed to obtain optimal benefit but also to ensure they are able to make educated recommendations on which therapy would be appropriate for certain patient subgroups depending on their mood profile types. 

Prescribing indicators. Various indicators are used commonly to evaluate and quantify prescribing in primary care. Surprisingly there are no recognized, uniform measures of prescribing in NHS secondary care. This research theme is examining the development and validation of effective prescribing indicators for use in hospitals.

Optimising antibiotic usage. Antibiotic usage is being examined as a key therapeutic intervention with problems associated with prescribing in order to model prescribing indicator development and devise medicines optimisation strategies.

Controlling medicines waste. There is crude evidence that wastage of pharmaceuticals is commonplace. This research strand is designed to quantify precisely the amount, types and reasons why medicines are not used. The theme also explores patient and prescriber attitudes towards wasted pharmaceuticals.

Optimising prescribing through education. SCRIPT HEE Prescribing Project - (www.safeprescriber.org) John leads the project funded by HEE to develop and implement an electronic prescribing education toolkit for F1 prescribers – the project has extended to the range of prescribers in healthcare. The project has developed and is evaluating the impact of modules developed in an interactive electronic web based format to improve the competency of prescribing. The evaluation and scope of the on-line learning is continuing.

Paediatric Medicines Management across the hospital-primary care interface. The nature and types of interaction between an NHS specialist paediatric care healthcare provider and the processes and systems involved in managing medicines in other healthcare sectors (principally NHS secondary and primary care) are being investigated.

Drug allergy labelling and de-labelling in the UK and globally. Methods to accurately label and de-label drug allergies are being investigated locally, nationally and globally.

• Member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Assembly
• Formulation Consultant Medicines for Children Research Network
• Member BNFC Paediatric Formulary Committee
• West Midlands NHS REC Chair  and expert committee member
• Member Academic Pharmacists Group