Dr Willie Hamilton ROLE: Senior Research Fellow FAX: 0117 331 3815 EMAIL: w.t.hamilton@btopenworld.com

Personal Details

Willie works three-quarters time in primary care research. He comes from a background of 10 years as a principal in general practice, and before that hospital medicine. He also spent 2 1/2 years in Malawi as a Government physician. He is in clinical general practice one day a week, and held RCGP/BUPA (2002-4) and NHS research fellowships (2002-6) was a Walport lecturer (2006-7), and now is a consultant senior lecturer, holding a NCCRCD post-doctoral award (2007-11). He is an associate editor of Family Practice. He is deaf, so contact by e-mail is best.

Qualifications: BSc, medical microbiology (Bristol) 1979 MB, ChB (Bristol) 1982, MRCP(UK) 1986, MRCGP 1989, FRCGP 2002, FRCP 2003, MD (Bristol) 2005.

Research

His research is mainly on issues of primary care diagnosis, particularly cancer. He is studying the early symptoms of cancer, most recently colorectal and ovarian cancers. The main output from his studies has been the calculation of precise risk estimates for particular presenting features of cancer. This has led to the development of a predictive tool for early diagnosis of colorectal cancer, which is currently being evaluated.

His recent and ongoing projects have been funded by the Department of Health (colorectal, prostate and lung cancer; brain tumours), Cancer Research UK (colorectal cancer, and the relationship between diagnostic delays and outcome in cancer), the National School for Primary Care Research (ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer and metastatic cancer), and recently a commercial company, Colonix Ltd.