The Management Board is responsible for the day to day running of the Yellow Card Centre Scotland. Apart from their daily duties the members of the Management Board meet on a quarterly basis to discuss activity and organisation of events, and to address any concerns which have been raised.

Below you can find brief biographies of the members of the Board and action points from their meetings.

Simon Maxwell MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCPE, FBPharmacolS FHEA: Chair

Medical Director

Simon Maxwell is Professor of Student Learning/Clinical Pharmacology and Director of Pharmacology & Therapeutics Teaching at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been active in developing e-Learning strategies to support education in this area. He is the Directors of the university’s Masters Programme in Internal Medicine. His clinical responsibilities include supervision of acute medical admissions and the management of outpatients at increased cardiovascular risk. His research interests have been in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease, prescribing and medicines safety.

His recent roles have included being Chair of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) Prescribing Committee, lead author of the core curriculum for clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) teaching in UK medical schools, Secretary of the European Association of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) and Chair of the International Union of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) Education Section. He was formerly a member of the NICE Drug Appraisals Committee, a member of the Scottish Medicines Consortium, the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) Pharmacovigilance Expert Advisory Committee, and is Medical Director of the Scottish Centre for Adverse Reactions to Drugs (CARDS). He was formerly Vice-President of the BPS and is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh, and of the Higher Education Academy.

He is Clinical lead for the Prescribe project, a joint collaboration between the Department of Health, Medical Schools Council (MSC) and BPS, to deliver a national eLearning solution to develop safe and effective prescribing amongst UK medical students. He is Medical Director of the UK Prescribing Skills Assessment, a joint initiative by the BPS and MSC to produce a national assessment of prescribing for all UK medical students.

James Dear PhD, MRCP

Scottish Poisons Information Bureau, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh

Deputy Medical Director

James Dear is a Consultant and Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the University of Edinburgh. He received his Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery degree from Oxford University and his PhD in Pharmacology from University College London.

Professor Dear completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Professor Dear has published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs and serves as a contributor to, and Editor for, Toxbase, the online database for management of poisoning in the UK. His current research focus is on markers and mediators of acute organ injury and poisoning.

Alison Strath

Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, Scotland

Alison Strath is the Chef Pharmaceutical Officer for the Scottish Government. As the senior professional advisor on pharmacy and medicines issues, Alison provides professional and strategic leadership to the pharmacy profession in Scotland. This includes leading and advising on pharmacy and medicines related policy and legislation, involving issues such as community pharmacy service negotiations, access to newly licensed medicines via the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) and the UK Voluntary Pricing and Access Scheme (VPAS).

Prior to this position, Alison was Principal Pharmaceutical Officer in the Scottish Government since 2002 and Professor of Community Pharmacy Practice at Robert Gordon University’s School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences in Aberdeen from 2008 to 2018.

From 2000 to 2002 Alison was Chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 2010. In 2018 Alison was appointed as an Emeritus Professor at the School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.

Alexander Kiker

Information Officer

Alexander completed a BSc (Hons) degree in Medical Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in 2011 and worked in hospital administration before joining the Yellow Card Centre Scotland in January 2018 as the centre’s Information Officer.

Alexander’s role in YCC Scotland involves keeping the centre’s website up-to-date, constructing reports based on data supplied by the MHRA, raising awareness of adverse drug reactions across Scotland, and increasing the visibility of the Yellow Card Scheme.