Council Member

Malcolm Maclure

Dr. Malcolm Maclure, ScD is BC Academic Chair in Patient Safety and Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics at UBC. The appointment allows him to continue half-time as Co-Director of Research and Evidence Development in the Ministry of Health's Pharmaceutical Services Division.

Raised in Victoria in the 1960s, he studied biochemistry at Oxford and epidemiology at Harvard in the 1970s. While teaching research methods at Harvard in the 1980s, he invented the case-crossover study design, now a standard tool of epidemiology that has recently been used to investigate triggers of patient-safety incidents. He retains the position of Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.

In 1991, he joined the BC Ministry of Health Services and began applying epidemiologic methods to health services research, particularly randomized trials of prescribing education programs. One of these is the Ministry-BCMA program called Education for Quality Improvement of Patient care (EQIP) of which he is Implementation Director.

He is principal investigator of the interprovincial Academic Detailing Evaluation Partnership Team (ADEPT) and a co-investigator with the Canadian Network
for Observational Drug Effects Studies (CNODES). He serves as ex-officio member of the BC Patient Safety and Quality Council.