Hello, my name is

Behind the job title

Joe Newman is training to be a specialist in respiratory medicine, and following a sidestep during the pandemic, he is also a Clinical Research Fellow dedicated to making a difference in PH. Working at the shiny new Heart and Lung Research Institute in Cambridge, Joe combines clinical expertise from Royal Papworth Hospital with research at the University of Cambridge – all as part of his PhD. We caught up with him to find out more…

“The most rewarding thing for me is when I can actually see research make a difference to a patient’s life.”

Joe Newman

Can you tell us what led to your work in the field of pulmonary hypertension?

Surprisingly perhaps, it was the pandemic. I had been a hospital doctor for seven years, working with patients every day, but then for the first time in my career, we had a new serious disease in COVID-19 that we had no idea how to treat. I got involved in helping to find patients willing to participate in a drug trial called RECOVERY and soon after, I started working in interstitial lung diseases (lung scarring or inflammation) at the Royal Papworth Hospital. Some of these patients went on to develop what we refer to as Group 3 PH. My desk in our big open plan office was right next to the pulmonary hypertension team, who always seemed to be having lots of interesting discussions.

How did that bring you to your PhD?

I was lucky enough to then start a Clinical Research Fellowship specifically in COVID-19 at Royal Papworth. This included vaccine studies, a follow-up clinic, and looking for a possible link between the blood clots seen with COVID-19 and Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension (CTEPH). My supervisor is a PH specialist and researcher who encouraged me to join his research team to undertake a PhD to apply some of the lessons learnt from our COVID-19 research work to PH. This has been a great move! Medicine is a perfect blend of a career in applying science to work with and help people. I didn’t imagine I’d be a researcher though, even as recently as a couple of years ago.

What’s keeping you busy at the moment?

Recognising the move (driven by the pandemic) of delivering more healthcare remotely via the internet and phones, we’re looking at whether clinical trials in PH can also benefit from this shift. So rather than patients having to attend hospital regularly for monitoring or to see if a drug is effective, we can collect the same information via an app – including questions on quality of life, exercise tests and eventually even things like blood tests. We’re working closely with a technology company and the PHA UK who have helped us co-design aspects of this research with patients. Keeping our research as patient-centred as possible is the leading principle. What does a ‘typical’ day look like for you? (If there is such a thing!)

It’s fairly varied and mainly officebased at the moment as our project is nearing the end of the set-up phase. So, lots of Zoom meetings, writing documents, attending conferences and in my case, trying to catch up on reading over 30 years of research in PH – not an easy task! As a team we’ve recently moved into the new Heart and Lung Research Institute in Cambridge which is really exciting. It is set up with laboratories to understand the biology of disease right through to our Clinical Research Facility in which patients can take part in drug trials – and everything in-between.

What aspect of your job do you enjoy the most, or find most rewarding?

As with clinical medicine, I enjoy the team element of research and how professionally diverse our team is with scientists, doctors, nurses and trial coordinators all working together to develop discoveries in the lab into to treatments for patients. We have so much to learn from each other and as a team we are greater than the sum of our parts. I enjoy actively bringing people together, as we’ve done with our collaboration of patients, researchers, doctors, the PHA UK and tech companies. This links in to another interest of mine; medical education – training medical

“I have been struck by how collaborative PH research in the UK is… as team we are greater than the sum of our parts”

students, junior doctors and other colleagues, encouraging them to get involved with research too. The most rewarding thing for me is when I can actually see research make a difference to a patient’s life.

Who or what inspires you in your work?

Of course, patients are a very powerful reminder of why we are doing what we’re doing. I also have to mention here my supervisor (boss) in Cambridge, Dr Mark Toshner, who I’m sure is well known to many of you in the PH community. He is a daily inspiration as someone who juggles many different jobs simultaneously – researcher, doctor, and lecturer. Mark has made (and will continue to make) a huge difference in the field of both PH and COVID-19 medicine through coming up with big ideas and then making them happen.

What do you think PH research does well, and what could it do better?

I have been struck by how collaborative PH research in the UK is. As it is a rare disease, the community is tightknit, well established and highly active. When I attend national meetings there is a sense that everyone is keen to work together on projects. An area that is a particular interest of mine, is thinking more about how we involve patients and their loved ones in shaping how we do research. How does a trial impact on the patients who volunteer to take part? What can we measure that most accurately reflects how patients feel and what they can do? We need to work closely with patients, carers and the PHA UK to continue to co-design research into the future. What excites you about research in the field of PH?

I am most excited about using the technology that many of us carry about every day to help understand PH in clinical trials – smartphones, wearables devices, apps and so on. This gives us a much better picture of the impact on patients’ lives whilst not placing a burden (time, cost, stress) on them needing to travel into hospital to undergo tests. These digital and remote tools will undoubtedly be an important aspect of future healthcare and we are working to understand how best to use them. But again, it needs to be easy to use and designed alongside patients. I appreciate that this technology is not always the best solution for everyone, so we also need to think of other innovative ways to include all patients who would like to take part in research.

Finally, when you do get some time off, how do you relax outside of work?

We are lucky enough to have two wonderful nursery-age daughters at home, so my wife thinks that I come to work to relax (!). Having a fulfilling family life is very important to me and a daily reminder of the need to balance work-life commitments. Increasingly, post-pandemic and with a young family, I find that I value more the simple things in life. Walking the dog (our whippet Lyra) in rural Cambridgeshire helps clear my head and keeps me happy.