Dr Elizabeth Sapey is a Reader in Acute and Respiratory Medicine within the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, University of Birmingham and a clinically active medical Consultant within University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, providing acute care for patients on admission to hospital. Her clinical work focuses her research, enables Liz to recognize current challenges within acute care provision and ensures patients are at the heart of the projects she designs and delivers.
Liz is passionate about increasing participation and involvement in research by health care professionals, patients and the public, so that science reflects our diverse population. She is the Managing Director of the NIHR adult Clinical Research Facility in Birmingham, a state-of-the-art clinical research facility that has supported over 14,000 patient research visits in 2018-19 and is currently delivering >450 active studies. Liz has increased the number and breadth of PIs in research, and embedded physiotherapists, physiologists, pharmacists, patients and lay members into the facility management to ensure the CRF represents the community it serves.
Liz’s research interests have focused on translational insights into the presentation of acute and chronic inflammatory lung diseases in older adults. With an interest in neutrophil biology, she has developed new assays and delivered early phase clinical studies to mitigate aberrant and damaging cellular processes.
More recently her interests have expanded as Liz has come to appreciate the health inequalities in acute care provision (when people seek unplanned healthcare) and the lack of quality data to inform and innovate healthcare practice in the emergency and acute medical setting. Acute medicine is a new specialty, with less history of academic or industry-focused endeavor. To address this, Liz developed the first national adult and paediatric acute care research group, started an academic training programme in acute medicine, and from this Birmingham gained the first NIHR funded ACL in acute medicine.
Being Director of PIONEER continues this journey, integrating traditionally siloed acute care healthcare providers, AI systems, academia and industry, with an aim of transforming care provision this area of critical need, improving outcomes and choices for patients.
Liz has achieved much of this while working part time, bringing up her two children.
