Medicine and Me: Living with Behçet's

Professor Dorian Haskard obtained his first degree in physiology at the University of Oxford and then moved to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School for clinical training. He developed his interest in vascular inflammation as a Fellow with Dr Morris Ziff at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas from 1984-1986.  In 1987 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship to develop his own laboratory at the UMDS, Guy’s Hospital.

He joined the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medicine in 1990. In October 1995 he was appointed to a Personal Chair in Rheumatology and to the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Sir John McMichael Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, which he occupied until 2016.

He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001. He has held a number of senior administrative positions at Imperial College London, including Head of the Section of Vascular Science and Head of the Division of Cardiovascular Clinical Science within the National Heart and Lung Institute, and Head of Immunology and Inflammation within the Department of Medicine. 

He currently convenes the Imperial College Network of Excellence in Vascular Science and serves as a College Consul for the Faculty of Medicine. His research is focused on understanding the biological basis of atherosclerosis and vascular inflammation. He has a long-standing interest in Behçet’s Disease and is currently President of the International Society for Behçet’s Disease. 

Dr Rohan D Situnayake MBChB (Birm) MSc Warwick FRCP is a consultant rheumatologist, with previous leadership positions including roles as Deputy and Medical Director for the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust and is currently Clinical Lead and Director Birmingham National Centre of Excellence for Behçets Disease from 2013 to the present. He has leadership expertise in clinical innovation and transformation and remains an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer University of Birmingham Academic Department of Rheumatology. 

In his clinical role he is a consultant rheumatologist practising in general rheumatology but with a specific interest in inflammatory arthritis, connective tissue disease and the impact of race/genetics on disease expression/outcome having been at the Trust since 1990.  He also runs a variety of clinics for patients with connective tissue disease (including systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma and overlap syndromes), osteoporosis and fibromyalgia. 

As a Medical Director he has contributed towards the planning of a new hospital, reconfiguration of hospital services particularly with respect to medical staffing and implementation of effective systems for clinical governance, job planning and appraisal. These skills have been applied to create a ‘one-stop, multi-disciplinary solution shop’ approach to the diagnosis and management of Behcet’s. He has ongoing research interests in the epidemiology and clinical phenotypes of Behcet’s and clinical trials of biological treatment

Robert is a clinical academic rheumatologist. Qualifying in Medicine in London, he earned his PhD at Oxford, moved to Harvard to continue his research and returned to the UK to establish a new academic rheumatology group in Liverpool.

He recently moved his academic affiliation to Edge Hill University, the newest UK medical school in the UK, to help train doctors from less privileged backgrounds. Robert’s research focuses on inflammatory rheumatological and autoimmune diseases, from bench to bedside. He has published extensively and holds major national grants. His group is designated European Centre of Excellence for Rheumatology research. Robert advises the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, is Past Editor of Rheumatology and lectures extensively internationally on his work.

Clinical service is a crucial part of his role. Robert is Director of the Liverpool Centre of Excellence for Behçet’s syndrome, leading national trials evaluating optimal therapy for this condition, as well as caring for patients. He has extensive experience in managing hard-to-treat rheumatological diseases and in delivering therapy with both standard and targeted drugs. He also has a special interest in helping lead the development of rheumatology in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tony Thornburn spent 35-years in the Armed Forces, subsequently invited to lecture in Systems Engineering at Cranfield University (Shrivenham) (2006 – 2016), having gained his MSc and MIET (2005), and then appointed chair of Behçet's UK in 2017.

Commissioned from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (1971) into the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment (now The Rifles) he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel which included command of 4 D and D, a Territorial Army battalion.  A graduate of the Joint Services Defence Course, Greenwich (1992) he qualified as a PRINCE2 Practitioner (2004), a member of the International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and APM Group. He was awarded an MBE in 1984 and an OBE in 2004. A Fellow of both the Chartered Management Institute and Institute of Leadership and Management, he remains a Visiting Fellow, Cranfield University.

Tony’s career spans such diverse topics as formulating MoD policy, research, acquisition, trials and teaching in the areas of Intelligence and Security, Electronic Warfare and Airborne Surveillance, to purchasing boots and socks for the Infantry, upgrades to the Warrior Armoured Fighting Vehicle and SA80 A2 personal weapon system, and running a Systems Engineering Module at AWE, Aldermaston.  A qualified Jungle and Winter Warfare Instructor he spent two years teaching in the US Army Infantry Centre, Fort Benning, as British Exchange Officer (1979-1980). He was Chairman of the Military Laser Safety Committee (Army), Infantry Nordic Skiing, co-authored a revised AC/225 D14 NATO Handbook for Small Arms and Ammunition Acquisition, and supported the development and introduction of a formalised Human Factors policy in the Defence Procurement Agency (now DE&S).

His attention is now focused on Patient Registry, Natural History studies, and the rare disease and genome space. He is an Associate Member of The Royal Society of Medicine, British Society for Rheumatology and International Society for Behçet's Disease.