Lynn Elsey

I lead respiratory pharmacy services at the North-West Lung Centre, the largest adult respiratory centre in the UK, and in severe asthma multi-disciplinary team (MDT) chairing local and regional MDT meetings and leading on medicines optimisation through innovative pharmacist-led clinics and MDT clinical assessments. I manage a large team of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who provide advanced pharmaceutical care across the respiratory directorate. I am regarded as a national expert in severe asthma. I have strategic roles at local, regional and national levels including developing adherence assessment pathways for severe asthma patients and identifying research priorities for asthma, which highlighted to me the need for further research in the area of adherence. Nationally I have an impact through my roles in: • NICE asthma guideline committee as hospital pharmacist representative. • BTS Respiratory Pharmacist specialist advisory group, advising on national policy and guidelines (e.g. NICE). • Lung Health Taskforce medicines optimisation working group and community pharmacy development subgroup, representing the voice of patients and BTS members. • NHS England and NHS Improvement severe asthma quality improvement group, a collaboration of national experts in severe asthma who have developed standards of care for severe asthma in the UK to improve equity of care. • Asthma Adherence group for the Accelerated Access Collaborative, a national programme to improve monitoring of adherence and access to biologics. As Lead Pharmacist for the North West Severe Asthma Network and severe asthma research and innovation team. I lead on the implementation of NICE guidance and pathways to improve and ensure equity of care and access to innovative treatments. Leadership and negotiation skills are a key to my success in this role with a highlight being successfully negotiating funding from NHS England for a homecare service for biologic injections for all patients across North West. I undertake research and service evaluations, leading on data collection, analysis and publications, and supervise medical students and registrars. I regularly present research at national and international conferences. Recently I used my skills in project development, research design and statistical analysis to undertake a study evaluating the 2-year clinical outcomes with mepolizumab, a targeted biologic therapy for severe eosinophilic asthma. I presented the findings at the European Respiratory Society Congress 2021 and recently published them with open access in the European Respiratory Journal. The findings will help guide targeted prescribing of mepolizumab. Across Greater Manchester I act as an advocate for respiratory medicine. I am a member of Greater Manchester Medicines Management (GMMMG) steering committee for COPD and asthma guidelines, ensuring the guidelines encompass the most up to date evidence and reduce variability of care across Greater Manchester. I was the lead pharmacist for the initial pilot study of the national CURE (Conversation, Understand, Replace, Expert and evidence-based) smoking cessation project. I led on cost analysis of medications, development of protocols and guidelines for smoking cessation treatments and ensured appropriate funding was maintained throughout the pilot study. This increased my knowledge of project development, identifying funding streams, engaging stakeholders and implementation across the ICS. This project is now published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, and rolled out nationally with the support of NHS England. I am a peer reviewer for high impact journals such as Thorax and conference abstracts for the British Thoracic Society (BTS), enriching my own understanding of research. In 2019 I was the first pharmacist to chair a session at the BTS Winter meeting. I collaborate nationally in multi-centre service evaluations, implementation projects and research. I contribute to the development of national pathways and identifying the respiratory priorities in England; where adherence to inhaled therapies is a major focus. I have built a multidisciplinary network of expert mentors who support my developing career. In 2020, I was awarded a grant to undertake a cross-site service evaluation of a smart inhaler device, evaluating its impact on adherence and the need for high-cost biologics. This 18-month project aimed to recruit 100 patients across Manchester and Portsmouth. I am the principal investigator at Manchester and meet monthly with the site lead from Portsmouth and representatives from Propeller®, the manufacturers of the device. I developed the project protocol, budget and data collection tools. Adherence and digital adherence monitoring are my main areas of research. I will be starting a PhD at the University of Manchester in April 2023 exploring the impact of digital inhaler monitoring on uncontrolled asthma.