Summary
Alison Holmes is a Professor of Infectious Diseases and the Director of both the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare Associated Infections and AMR and the Centre for Antimicrobial Optimisation (CAMO), at Imperial College London. She leads a large multidisciplinary infectious disease research programme focusing on antimicrobial resistance, epidemiology, public health, precision medicine and the development of emerging, innovative technologies to address infection prevention and management, antibiotic optimisation and AMR nationally and globally. She leads an ESRC international programme with collaborators in India and South Africa, as well as Wellcome Trust-funded projects led by colleagues in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and collaborators in Vietnam and Thailand.
Professor Holmes is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an NIHR Senior Investigator and an Infectious Disease consultant within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Until June 2021, she was also the Associate Medical Director, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the Trust. Throughout her longstanding clinical and research career Professor Holmes has conducted clinically applied research that influences local, national and international practice. She served as an expert member of the Governmental Advisory Committee on AMR and Healthcare Associated Infection for nine years and as a national expert witness for Parliamentary Health and Science and Technology Committees.
Professor Holmes is the current President of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, and serves on a variety of WHO Expert groups related to antimicrobial use, AMR, infection prevention and sepsis. In addition to her role as chair or advisor for numerous international scientific advisory boards, funding panels and editorial boards she is the outgoing Chair of the Fleming Fund’s Technical Advisory Group (Department of Health and Social Care), a former Board Member of the Wellcome Trust’s Surveillance & Epidemiology of Drug-resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC) and has recently joined the Scientific Advisory Board of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic Professor Holmes has contributed to national COVID-19 responses through the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Hospital Onset COVID-19 working group and her research group’s work in this field. She has also been active in the international responses through her roles with WHO on WHO COVID panels including the WHO R&D Expert Advisory Group for COVID-19 and the WHO Health Emergencies Program (WHE) Ad-Hoc Advisory Panel of Infection Prevention and Control Experts for Preparedness, Readiness and Response to COVID-19 (WHE-IPC-AP).
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Rodriguez-Manzano J, Malpartida-Cardenas K, Moser N, et al., 2020, A handheld point-of-care system for rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 in under 20 minutes
Rawson TM, Moore L, Zhu N, et al., 2020, Bacterial and fungal co-infection in individuals with coronavirus: A rapid review to support COVID-19 antimicrobial prescribing, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Vol:71, ISSN:1058-4838, Pages:2459-2468
Charani E, Ahmad R, Rawson T, et al., 2019, The differences in antibiotic decision-making between acute surgical and acute medical teams: An ethnographic study of culture and team dynamics, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Vol:69, ISSN:1058-4838, Pages:12-20
Gharbi M, Lishman H, Goudie R, et al., 2019, Antibiotic management of urinary tract infection in the elderly in primary care and its association with bloodstream infections and all-cause mortality: a population-based cohort study, Bmj, Vol:365, ISSN:0959-8138
Chatterjee A, Modarai M, Naylor N, et al., 2018, Quantifying drivers of antibiotic resistance in humans: a systematic review, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol:18, ISSN:1473-3099, Pages:e368-e378
Otter JA, Doumith M, Davies F, et al., 2017, Emergence and clonal spread of colistin resistance due to multiple mutational mechanisms in carbapenemase-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in London, Scientific Reports, Vol:7, ISSN:2045-2322
Rawson T, moore L, Hernandez B, et al., 2017, A systematic review of clinical decision support systems for antimicrobial management: Are we failing to investigate these interventions appropriately?, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Vol:23, ISSN:1469-0691, Pages:524-532
Rawson T, Charani E, Moore L, et al., 2016, Mapping the decision pathways of acute infection management in secondary care among UK medical physicians: a qualitative study, BMC Medicine, Vol:14, ISSN:1741-7015
Holmes AH, Moore LSP, Sundsfjord A, et al., 2015, Understanding the mechanisms and drivers of antimicrobial resistance, Lancet, Vol:387, ISSN:1474-547X, Pages:176-187
Zingg W, Holmes A, Dettenkofer M, et al., 2014, Hospital organisation, management, and structure for prevention of health-care-associated infection: a systematic review and expert consensus, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol:15, ISSN:1473-3099, Pages:212-224