Cambridge University announces inaugural
appointment of the Dennis Gillings Professorship
in Health Management

Friday 4 December 1998

The business school at Cambridge University today announces the
inaugural
appointment of the Dennis Gillings Professorship in Health Management.

Professor Don Detmer, a recognised leader in the new field of medical
informatics, will arrive from the University of Virginia in the USA to
take
up his new post at the University's business school, the Judge Institute
of
Management Studies, by the Easter Term in 1999.

Professor Detmer has enjoyed a distinguished career as an academic,
surgeon, entrepreneur and health-care policy expert for the USA. He has
been a pioneer in the area of medical informatics, which involves the
issues surrounding the development of technology in health care. One
application, for example, is the use of computer-based patient records
to
give doctors instant access to medical information on anyone in their
care.

The chair was established a year ago, thanks to a generous endowment of
£2
million from Dr Dennis Gillings, a Cambridge alumnus and Chairman and
CEO
of Quintiles Transnational Corp, the world's largest pharmaceutical
organisation.

Professor Detmer will join the well established Health Management
Research
Group at the Judge Institute, led by its Director, Professor Sandra
Dawson,
herself an expert in health care. The highlight of the group's work is
the
annual Cambridge International Health Leadership Programme, which
attracts
leading health practitioners and policy makers from around the world.

Professor Dawson comments:

"Professor Don Detmer is a leading international figure in the field of
health management; his arrival at the Judge Institute is an invaluable
opportunity to drive forwards the exciting health research which is
ongoing
here and to firmly place the Institute as a world renowned centre for
work
in this field."

President of the Institute of Medicine in the USA, Kenneth Shine, adds:

"Don Detmer has been a visionary leader in the nation's effort to
improve
patient records, to obtain accurate patient information required to give
the best care, and to find better ways to  continuously improve that
care."


Notes for Editors:

1.  The Judge Institute of Management Studies is Cambridge University's
business school. Management Studies at Cambridge has grown from a small
group within the Engineering Department in 1954 to become a substantial
and
growing Institute founded in 1990. It has over 200 students and an
international faculty of 45 full-time and 20 part-time teaching and
research staff.  Teaching and research benefit greatly from a wide
network
of associate faculty in other departments of the University, in
universities throughout the world and in industry and public services.
The
current Director is Professor Sandra Dawson, who also heads the Health
Management Research Group. She has published on management development,
organisational change and technology transfer in health. She has been
the
Chairman of an NHS Trust and is an adviser to the NHS Executive.

2.  Dr Dennis Gillings, born in London and now a dual British/US
citizen,
was a student at Churchill College Cambridge where he took a Diploma in
Mathematical Statistics. He held academic positions at the University of
North Carolina between 1971 and 1988, and founded Quintiles in 1982.
Quintiles Transnational Corp. is now the market leader in providing
full-service contract research, sales and marketing services to the
world-wide pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries,
and
provides healthcare policy consulting and health information management
services to the healthcare industry.

3. Professor Don Detmer is currently a senior vice president at the
University of Virginia.  From 1988 to 1995 he served as vice president
and
provost for the University's Health Sciences Center, overseeing the
operations of the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the
Medical Center. At the University, he was a both a professor surgery and
a
professor of business administration in the Darden Graduate School of
Business.  He is a specialist in vascular surgery, sports medicine,
health
administration, medical informatics, and health policy. He trained in
surgery at The Johns Hopkins University Hospital, the National
Institutes
of Health, and Duke University, before serving for eleven years on the
University of Wisonsin's surgery and preventative medicine faculty.
Professor Don Detmer serves on numerous boards, is author of more than
130
academic articles and book chapters, and sits on editorial boards for
many
journals.

4. The University of Virginia, founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson in
Charlottesville, Virginia, is one of the leading research universities
in
North America.  Particularly noted for its undergraduate teaching and
for
graduate programs in law, humanities, business administration,
biomedical
engineering, and basic medical sciences, it enrols 18,400 students and
has
a full-time teaching and research faculty of 1,822.  Among its
distinctions
is the oldest student-run Honor System in the country.  For the past
five
years, U.Va. has been ranked the #1 public university by U.S. News and
World Report.

Contacts:

Professor Sandra Dawson
Director of the Judge Institute
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 339590
Fax: +44 (0) 1223 339601
E-mail: s.dawson@jims.cam.ac.uk

Ruth Shaw
Press & Publicity, the Judge Institute
Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 339608
Fax: + 44 (0) 1223 339701
E-mail: r.shaw@jims.cam.ac.uk

Louise Dudley
Director of University Relations, University of Virginia
Tel: (001) 804 924 1400
Fax: (001) 804 924 0938
E-mail: lmd2a@virginia.edu