Andrew Mclachlan BPharm, PhD, FPS, FACP, MCPA, MSHPA

Professor Andrew McLachlan is the Program Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Medicines and Ageing, and leader of Health Services and Patient Safety Research theme at the Faculty of Pharmacy and at Concord Hospital’s Centre for Education and Research on Ageing. He is a pharmacist, academic and researcher experienced in clinical and experimental pharmacology and research on the quality use of medicines. His research focuses on understanding the variability in response to medicines and how this can be managed to optimise patient care, particularly in special patient populations such as older people, the very young and the critically ill. He is interested in translating clinical pharmacology research into real-world practice. A key collaboration is the creation and maintenance of an herb-drug interactions database for healthcare professionals, which to date includes >700 monographs.

He collaborated on the SEARCH-AF study, which demonstrated the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of an iPhone ECG App for community screening of atrial fibrillation in pharmacies, and was co-author with researchers from the George Institute for Global Health on a study published in the Lancet (2014), which found that paracetamol was no more effective than placebo for improving the time to recovery in people with acute low back pain. Professor MacLachlan is Chair of the Sydney Local Health District Human Research Ethics Committee and the Drug and Therapeutics Committee, an Advisory Committee Member of the Ageing and Alzheimer’s Institute at Concord Hospital, and past President of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association (APSA).

He has served on expert panels advising the Therapeutic Goods Administration on medicines and the Australian Government on antidoping, and was appointed the inaugural Chair of the National Medicines Policy Committee (2009-2013) by the Minister for Health and Ageing. He was awarded Pharmacist of the Year (2006) by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, and received the 2013 Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association APSA medal, the association’s highest award. He is an Executive Editor of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.