Crystallise Ltd was established in 2012. Our experience of clinical medicine, health informatics, programming and consultancy in healthcare, pharmaceutical, finance and other public sectors gave us a unique perspective on the benefits that arise from applying the learnings and approaches of one discipline to the problems faced by another industry.
The aim of Crystallise is to provide an innovative approach to processing information, using software tools to automate processes that are slower and less accurate when done by humans. Our approach provides clients with greater transparency and scope than they could find for the same budget elsewhere. We work with a network of experts and organisations that help us support clients efficiently and effectively, and are proud of our flexible and ingenious way of solving their problems.
The Crystallise team has more than 50 years’ combined experience in providing services for healthcare and pharmaceutical clients.
Qualified doctors provide medical insight into mortality trends and their drivers. Clinical understanding means new medical developments are rapidly evaluated in the context of current practice and unmet needs.
Staff experienced in systematic reviews and evidence synthesis for pharmaceutical and health technology assessment clients ensure reports are based on systematic evaluation of the evidence.
Staff skilled in writing for a non-medical audience mean the evidence is synthesised into easily understood reports.
Pragmatic and systematic evidence synthesis skills mean bespoke reports can be adapted to your requirements, deadlines and budget.
The Crystallise team has more than 30 years’ combined experience in modelling data for healthcare, pharmaceutical and financial clients.
Data identification and cleansing skills and systematic review expertise ensure reliable and unbiased model inputs.
Smoothing and statistical expertise means data can be presented at different levels of granularity without losing validity or confusing outputs with unnecessary “noise”.
Staff with combined medical, financial and modelling skills mean model outputs make sense for clinicians, actuaries, financial advisors and healthcare payers or providers.
Mortality models allow you flexibility in choosing outputs, including central mortality, curves of death, life expectancy and years of life lost – overall and by cause of death.
The Crystallise team has more than 45 years’ combined experience in computer programming and software development for healthcare and financial clients.
Experienced programmers translate mortality models into easy-to-use software.
Medical input into graphic design provides clear representation of complex medical concepts.
The Crystallise team has more than 10 years of collective experience on interpreting mortality data for financial clients.
Staff with medical expertise rapidly identify significant medical advances that will affect mortality improvement.
Chris is a former General Practitioner and Health Informatician with an MSc and PhD from the Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education at University College, London. He has specialised in cause of death and risk factors-based mortality and longevity modelling to support health care decision-making at the clinical and policy level for over twenty years, and has worked in the pensions and insurance industry since 2008.
He is a Fellow and former Council member of the Royal College of General Practitioners and is a former chairman of the Essex Faculty of the RCGP and the Essex Primary Care Research Network.
Chris is the co-founder of Crystallise Ltd., which provides medical modelling advice and software to the finance, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. He has contributed to Longevity Science Panel reports The biology of ageing and Life expectancy: is the socioeconomic gap narrowing? At Crystallise, Chris leads the modelling team on developing a range of mortality, infectious disease and clinical trial simulation models.
Alison has experience as a junior hospital doctor working in general medicine, nephrology, medical oncology, cardiology, general surgery and urology. However, most of her career has been spent working in the field of evidence-based medicine for organisations including Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, the BMJ Group, Matrix Knowledge Group, Evidera and Crystallise. At the BMJ Group she was a Senior Clinical Editor on evidence-based publications for clinicians and other health care staff and researchers, including BMJ Clinical Evidence, BMJ Best Practice and BMJ Action Sets.
During her time at Matrix, Alison led the team that delivered evidence reviews for a wide range of clients including NICE, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Health Foundation, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. At Evidera, she led a series of systematic reviews and HTA submissions for pharmaceutical companies. At Crystallise, Alison has led the development of the heoro.com database and the Evidence Map deliverable. She has helped with content generation and editing of reports for the Legal and General Longevity Science Panel and conducted targeted and systematic reviews for pharmaceutical clients, including HTA submissions to NICE.
Ashley is a Actuary with over 10 years’ experience working in the insurance and pensions industry. He is a consultant in the areas of longevity, mortality and infectious disease risk modelling and has worked with some of the largest insurers, reinsurers, and pensions consultants in the market. His area of expertise is devising innovative multi-disciplinary solutions to clients’ risk modelling problems, leveraging his experience across actuarial modelling, cause-of-death and risk factors-based mortality and longevity modelling, and catastrophe risk modelling.
Ashley has a bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Science and Mathematics from the University of Manchester, he is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (FIA) and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary (CERA).
Outi joined Crystallise in 2022 and has over 7 years of experience in conducting both clinical and economic systematic reviews including multiple submissions to NICE, IQWIG and Nordic HTA bodies. She has a joint honours BSc degree in cognitive neuroscience and psychology and has worked within a range of therapeutic areas.
Outi has a special interest in the development of new SLR methods and she is a full member of Cochrane collaboration and the Cochrane Crowd initiative.
Alex has a BSc in Biomedical Science from Royal Holloway University London and an MSc in Biomedical Science specialising in microbiology from Kingston University.
As part of her MSc, Alex studied research techniques and scientific communication, including systematic review methodology. At Crystallise, Alex has worked on systematic and targeted reviews and Evidence Map generation for Pharmaceutical clients and is leading on the development of an infectious disease model.
William has a BA in Biological Sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in Stem Cell and Developmental Biology from University College London. For his doctoral research project, he studied the interaction of circadian and cell cycle rhythms as well as the role of mutations in the gene Bestrophin-1 in ADVIRC disease.
At Crystallise, he leads the research and development team to develop internal and external software products. He also works within the modelling team to produce client deliverables.
Louisa has a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Edinburgh and went on to study medicine at King’s College London. She gained experience as a junior doctor in general medicine, general surgery, emergency medicine, oncology and pathology. She went on to work for the BMJ Group where she worked within the Evidence Centre on the evidence-based publication BMJ Best Practice. She was responsible for all stages of content development of healthcare articles for digital platforms.
Louisa also worked for BMJ Informatica/Health Analytics where she was involved in the creation and editing of new and existing digital products, intelligence tools and software that provided real time guidance, assistance in population screening, diagnosis and treatment for GPs. She had particular involvement in the patient safety aspect and testing of these tools. At Crystallise, Louisa works with the reviews team, assisting with screening, data extraction and report writing.
Holly completed a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Sussex and went on to do a MSc in Public Health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. During both her university courses she completed modules on medical research methods and statistics. For her master‘s dissertation, Holly completed a systematic review titled: “The Experience of Dementia Diagnosis in Individuals from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups: A Systematic Review and Qualitative synthesis”.
Holly has been a researcher at Crystallise for 2 years and is responsible for helping to carry out systematic literature reviews.
Michal joined Crystallise in 2021 and has 10+ years’ experience in evidence generation and synthesis across diverse thematic and therapeutic areas. Before joining Crystallise, Michal has spent 6.5 years at DRG Abacus where he contributed to various projects, including systematic reviews, network meta-analyses and HTA submissions. Prior to that, Michal worked for the Polish HTA agency (Agency for the Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System), where he was involved in systematic reviews conducted to support reimbursement decisions. Michal also worked as a research fellow in systematic review at the Human Nutrition Unit, INRA, France, on the Eurreca project developed to harmonize European micronutrient recommendations. Michal has an MSc in Biotechnology from the Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland.
Michal’s Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=G_gstOEAAAAJ
Nicola has a BSc in Psychology from Leeds Beckett University and an MSc in Health Psychology from Staffordshire University. As part of her BSc, Nicola completed a research assistant placement working within the Stigmatised Sexualities and Sexual Harm Research Group which involved assisting on a literature review to inform the production of infographics to challenge commonly held myths surrounding sexual violence and abuse. Throughout university she has specialised in cognitive, experimental psychology. Her undergraduate research project investigated the effect of emotion on visual perception and attention and her postgraduate research project used eye–tracking to investigate health priming, visual attention and food choice.
Kelly has a BSc in Biology from the University of Athens, a MSc by research in Reproductive Sciences from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Medical Sciences from the Hull York Medical School. Her PhD dissertation focused on the impact of hyperglycaemia on early embryo environment and development.
Kelly has previous experience in conducting systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses, which she gained during her time as a Clinical Evidence Specialist for Smith and Nephew. The results of one of the systematic reviews performed as part of this position were published in Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy in 2020.
At Crystallise, Kelly is responsible for proofreading and editing components of systematic literature reviews to ensure the accuracy of the information presented.
Andrea has an MSc in Biology from the University of Parma (Italy) and a PhD in Cardiac Electrophysiology from the Polyclinic University A. Gemelli in Rome (Italy). His dissertation focused on arrhythmogenic mechanisms in animal models of senescence and cardiac hypertrophy.
He developed an interest in scientific writing and editing while researching his dissertation and later went on to gain a qualification in proofreading from the Publishing Training Centre.
Before joining Crystallise in 2021, he worked for over 7 years as a freelance copy-editor and proofreader. During this time, he worked on a variety of assignments, with a particular interest in academic journal submissions.
At Crystallise, Andrea is responsible for proofreading and editing components of systematic literature reviews and infographics.
Jay has a BMedSci in Medical Science and a PhD in Vascular Pathology from De Montfort University. He has experience in cell culture and cell signalling, having investigated the effects of diabetes-associated inflammatory cytokines, on the signalling cascade of the Angiopoietin/Tie receptor pathway in endothelial cells. Whilst completing his PhD, Jay also worked as a part-time lecturer and attained the award of Associate Fellow for the Higher Education Academy. Jay has published a literature review in the Journal of Receptors and Signal Transduction and abstracts in Heart BMJ, as well as presenting data at the British Society for Cardiovascular Research (BSCR) conference.
Christianah studied Medicine at the University of Lagos. She also obtained an intercalated BSc in Physiology. She has experience as a medical officer working in general medicine and general surgery. While studying, Christianah completed courses on principles of epidemiology, research methodology and medical statistics. She also researched on how Moringa oleifera affects cardiovascular functions in albino rats.
At Crystallise, Christianah works with the reviews team and is involved all aspects of the systematic review process.
Tahera has a BSc in Psychology from Lancaster University and has completed post graduate modules in statistics in health research, principles and methods of systematic reviews, and design and interpretation of clinical trials. Tahera has experience as an academic health researcher with the University of Central Lancashire and has published on stroke management and multi-morbidity in older people. She also supported the teaching of the NETSMART (Neurological Education and Training in Stroke Management and Acute Reperfusion Therapy) module.
At Crystallise, Tahera works with the reviews team, assisting with all aspects of the systematic review process.
Gareth graduated from Edinburgh Medical School with an MBChB in 2020 and is currently studying part-time for an MSc in Data Science, Technology, and Innovation at Edinburgh University’s Bayes Centre. During his MBChB, Gareth had the opportunity to undertake systematic literature reviews on two topics. One being the relationship between alcohol dependence and depression and the second being of the pathophysiological mechanisms of hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction. He also conducted a project in health and homelessness, investigating opiate substitute therapy at the Edinburgh Access Practice.
At Crystallise Gareth is involved in all aspects of the systematic literature review process and provides data science support to the modelling team.
Eleanor has a BSc in Medical Sciences from the University of Leeds. For her dissertation, Eleanor completed a grant proposal as well as a critical review titled: “The Validity of Metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing for the Clinical Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases and to Improve Clinical Outcomes”. Eleanor also has experience as a clinical support worker in a teaching hospital.
Fern graduated from Bangor University in 2017 with a 1st class BSc in Biomedical Science. She has also undertaken postgraduate projects about the molecular cell biology of dementia, and metastatic cancer. Prior to working at Crystallise, she worked in NHS pathology laboratories. At Crystallise, she works in the systematic reviews team.
Dr Aurelien ANAKEU graduated from medical school with Distinction in 2013 in Cameroon. He worked for 4 years as a medical doctor, where he held leadership positions including Head of the Accident and Emergency department and Staff physician in the haemodialysis unit of a secondary care hospital, then Head of the surgical department in a district hospital. He also acquired experience in designing, implementing and monitoring public health interventions, as well as capacitating health care staff during this period.
He then worked for 3 years with a humanitarian NGO where he pioneered the medical department of a 70-bed secondary care hospital, contributed significantly to the public health programs of the NGO, and was the program coordinator and a main lecturer in the Nursing and Allied health professions Higher Education Institution of the NGO. He obtained a fully funded scholarship in 2020 to study a Master’s in Public Health at the Queen’s University Belfast, which he completed with 78% average. His dissertation was a systematic review with meta-analysis on Placental malaria as a risk factor for mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
He has experience in medical research, data analysis and scientific writing. At Crystallise he is responsible for helping to carry out systematic literature reviews.
Jennifer has a Bachelor’s degree of Pharmacy from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Master’s degree of Clinical Pharmacy from the University of Hong Kong. During her MClinPharm, Jennifer had the opportunity to study research methods and complete a systematic review.
Before joining Crystallise, she had experience working in pharmaceutical and healthcare institutions. At Crystallise, Jennifer works with the reviews team and is involved in all aspects of the systematic review process.
Tichawona Chinzowu is a Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Science with more than 23 years of experience as a healthcare scientist in private and public diagnostic laboratories in Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom.
Although a microbiologist by specialty, Tichawona has spend almost 10 years working across pathology disciplines including haematology, biochemistry and transfusion science, in addition to microbiology. After graduating at the University of Zimbabwe as a Medical Laboratory Scientist, he went on to study for an MSc Medical Microbiology with the University of Westminster, and an MSc Epidemiology with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Currently, he is a part-time PhD student with the University of Bath, where he is working on pharmaco-epidemiological approaches to antimicrobial-associated adverse events among older adults. He has led in the development of a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol, carried out the systematic review and meta-analysis, and successfully published both papers in peer reviewed journals.
As an evidence synthesis enthusiast, he joined Crystallise as systematic reviews researcher and will be involved in various aspects of conducting systematic literature reviews.
Neelam earned her first Master’s degree in Computer Science from Devi Ahilya University. Following this, Neelam gained over 5 years of experience in software development after starting a role as a Junior Java Developer. Neelam studied Big Data Science at Queen Mary University of London as her second Master’s degree. In doing so she gained familiarity with machine and deep learning concepts as well as data mining tools and cloud/big data queries. During her second MSc, Neelam had the opportunity to conduct projects in music classification using machine learning, image classification using deep learning, and task management API using cloud computing. Concurrently with this MSc, Neelam worked as a Data Science intern focusing on LTV and churn modelling.
At Crystallise, Neelam provides Data Science and Data Engineering expertise in the modelling team
Caitlyn is currently completing a BSc in Cancer Biomedicine at University College London, and has taken modules including Cancer Biology, Pharmacology and Drug Action, as well as Medical Statistics. Caitlyn is interested in immunology and oncology and has experience interning at a cancer research centre studying new drugs for breast cancer in Guangzhou, China.
At Crystallise, Caitlyn is working as a Research Assistant.
With decades of experience in accountancy, book-keeping, business administration and recruitment, including running her own staffing agency and office services company for many years, Sue is now responsible for business administration at Crystallise, and finds and hires the awesome talent required to keep Crystallise over-delivering on the diverse range of projects it takes on.
If you are interested in working for Crystallise she is the person to get in touch with, or if you want to know more about how Crystallise can help solve your modelling and informatics problems she can put you in touch with the right people.
Shannon has a BSc in Sport and Exercise Science from the University of Bath and an MSc in Data Science and Analytics from Brunel University London. As part of her MSc, Shannon developed a pandemic model of Europe using Petri Nets to simulate the spread of COVID-19 investigating various intervention measures.
During her BSc, Shannon helped on an exercise nutrition study investigating dietary carbohydrate periodisation on iron regulation and immune function in elite triathletes, and her final year dissertation examined the effect of certain psychological moderators on stress and injury risk in university athletes.
During their time with Crystallise, Shannon modelled national data to parameterise mortality models. She has worked on developing software tools to facilitate data extraction and now provides ad hoc consulting services.
Simplified Data is led by Danielle Bodicoat, a former lecturer in epidemiology. She is an experienced medical statistician and medical writer with a solid theoretical grounding. She has a 1st class BSc in Mathematics with Statistics, an MSc in Medical Statistics (Distinction) for which she was awarded a scholarship for by GlaxoSmithKline, and a PhD in Epidemiology. She has over 12 years of applied experience with a proven track record including 80 plus peer-reviewed publications. She has spent years designing, conducting and supervising statistical analyses.
As well as authoring her own papers, she has written and coordinated grant applications that have attracted over £8 million in funding and has also written numerous clinical trial protocols.
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