First Know Thyself: A Self-Assessment Program on Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)

Peter C. Taylor, PhD, holds the Norman Collison chair of musculoskeletal sciences at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. He is the Director of Clinical Sciences and the Biomedical Research Unit inflammation theme at the Botnar Research Centre and leads the rheumatology clinical trials group at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology within the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences.
 
Professor Taylor was formerly Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Division, Imperial College London and Dean of the Charing Cross campus. He studied pre-clinical medical sciences at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge and his first degree was in Physiology. He subsequently studied clinical medicine at the University of Oxford and was awarded a PhD from the University of London for studies on pathogenesis of arthritis.
 
Professor Taylor was appointed Medical Director of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, a patient-led charity that works tirelessly to support patients with rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile inflammatory arthritis. Professor Taylor chairs the UK government and NIHR Translational Research Partnership in rheumatology that brings together the UK's leading academic and clinical centres for experimental medicine and translational research into a ready-formed partnership of Universities and NHS hospitals. He was nominated as a distinguished member of the British Society for Rheumatology in 2016.
 
Professor Taylor has specialist clinical interests in inflammatory arthritis. He has over 20 years' experience in clinical trial design and international leadership in studies of biologic and small molecular therapies in rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis including the earliest seminal trails of anti-TNF and anti-IL-6 receptor therapy. His research expertise is in mechanisms sustaining inflammation and clinical trials of new therapies with development of novel outcome measurements for application in assessment of response to therapy, including ultrasonographic and high-field magnetic resonance imaging technology. In experimental medicine studies, Professor Taylor employs targeted therapies as probes of pathogenesis to investigate the in vivo biology of the target in the pathobiology of the disease phenotype under investigation. His interest in novel outcome measures also includes new tools for the personalized assessment of well-being which can be used adjunctively to clinical outcome measures in informing management decisions.