Professor Andrea Manfrin

Andrea, as Faculty Director of Research, leads the research teams across the schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. He guides the strategic development of the vertical and horizontal integration of the research within the Faculty of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences with the other Faculties at UCLan and other Universities at National and International level. He is also Chair Professor of Pharmacy Practice and supports the development of the pharmacy practice curriculum and research within the school. In 2020, Andrea, together with Dr Andrew Lunn, founded of the Pedagogic Interest Group (PIG). PIG has submitted three abstracts to the Pharmacy Education conference 2020 and published one paper in less than 6-month. Moreover, Andrea with Dr Andrew Lunn and Dr Victorio Bambini Junior is developing a multidisciplinary team of students (pharmacy, biomedical sciences and computer science) for the co-production of the Scientific Initiation Programme (SIP) which has started in the Summer of 2020. Andrea and Dr Andrew Lunn are working on an international multicentre project called Idea Density (ID). They started an internal collaboration with Dr Daniel Bürkle, psycholinguistics, working at UCLan. Andrea has a very open attitude using a can-do approach which inspires and enthuses others. He has has also been recognised as in inspirational a leader on many occasions, nationally and internationally.

Since he qualified as pharmacists, in 1988, Andrea has developed a broad experience working in primary and secondary care, pharmaceutical industry, management consultancy; and he owned two pharmacies, one in Italy and one in Switzerland. In 2009, he decided to have a career change and joined academia working at the University of Kent (2009-2017; UK), Sussex (2017-2019; UK), and from September 2019 UCLan (UK). Andrea is a quantitative researcher; whose main area of interest is health services research where he led the development and evaluation of a bespoke pharmacist-led intervention for patients suffering from chronic lung conditions. The results of his international work conducted in Italy had an impact on policy and practice, with the Government allocating 36 million Euros for funding such services. Further developments of his research have demonstrated the contribution that pharmacists are making for the sustainability of the health care system. His research has informed 'Pharmacy 2030: A Vision for Community Pharmacy in Europe', a publication issued by the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU) which is the European association representing more than 400,000 community pharmacists contributing to the health of over 500 million people throughout Europe. According to Altmetric, one of his papers is in the 96th percentile of the 266,165 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals and is ranked 1st of the 105 tracked articles in BMC Health Services Research. His work is also included in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) evidence website, contributing towards evidence used to inform 2019 NICE guidelines for emergency and acute care, and cited by the Cochrane review. Andrea has demonstrated leadership ability on many occasions, such as leading a national research project in Italy. The President of the Italian Pharmacists Federation, Dr Andrea Mandelli who is an Italian MP wrote "Dr Manfrin has demonstrated a high level of cultural, scientific and relational skills, showing great professionality, passion, enthusiasm and dedication to the work. Dr Andrea Manfrin has shown to have undoubted skills in coordinating the various health care professionals who participated in the study".