Samir Dhalla is Head of ‘The Health Improvement Network (THIN)’ a Cegedim Company. THIN utilises and curates anonymised real world data from GP practices to advance medical research, and ultimately improve the lives of patients through collaborations with Academia, the Life Sciences industry and the NHS. THIN has expanded its reach to include GP practices in France, Spain, Belgium and Italy, with ambitious plans to bring on Germany as well.

Samir began his career as a Pharmacist, serving patients in community settings and then in the Hospital sector. He has led initiatives to improve areas of research that benefit clinicians and patients alike, through the development of data driven clinical trial services, which puts the disease areas of concern for primary care clinicians at the core of any research. Samir has unlocked the use of unstructured data from clinician notes utilising machine learning methods at scale, working with the NHS Health Research Authorities to realise the potential in this transformative area, most notably resulting in a Long Covid research project in collaboration with University College London who now have the potential to access over 20 Million anonymised health records through THIN.