Researcher profile

Angus McNair

Major roles Angus McNair is Professor of Colorectal Surgery at the University of Bristol and Honorary Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Bristol NHS Foundation Trust. He is Co-lead designate of the Surgical and Peri-operative Care theme for Bristol's NIHR Biomedical Research Centre application, Surgery Theme Co-Lead for the former NIHR Oncology Translational Research Collaboration, a member of NICE's Interventional Procedures Advisory Committee, and a member of the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit funding committee. He held a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Clinician Scientist Award and was a Board member of the National Cancer Research Institute until its closure in 2024. Research leadership and impact He develops methods that improve how surgery is evaluated and how patients are informed. He co-authored the COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) Handbook, specifically the qualitative methods for identifying patient-centred outcomes, cited over 1600 times and used to develop more than 300 core outcome sets internationally. These methods are recommended by the SPIRIT trial-design guidelines, the ISRCTN registry, the European Medicines Agency, the Health Research Authority, the Cochrane Collaboration, NIHR and NICE. He is lead author on studies defining standards for surgical information provision, incorporated into NICE guidelines NG83 (Perioperative Care) and NG180 (Oesophago-gastric cancer). He leads early-phase evaluation of surgical innovation and devices, developing core outcome and information sets for new procedures and methods to optimise shared decision making. His current work moves surgical innovations toward first-in-human evaluation and adoption, including the ALPACA programme, which measures patients' experience of shared decision making in real time at health-system scale, co-developed with industry and now informing the care of over 70,000 patients. Grant income and publications He has been awarded over £4.3 million in research funding, including £1.1 million as Principal Investigator, and holds an NIHR Programme Grant for Applied Research application (£3.48 million) under review. He has 111 peer-reviewed publications, 24 as lead or senior author, in journals including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, PLOS Medicine and Annals of Surgery. His Google Scholar h-index is 32 (6086 citations) and his Scopus h-index is 27. He is recognised among the top 1% of colorectal cancer scholars (Expertscape), and over 40% of his publications rank in the most-cited quartile worldwide (SciVal). Academic leadership McNair co-leads the final year of the University's MB ChB programme, directing a team of senior academics and administrators across seven regional academies for approximately 300 students a year, accountable to the General Medical Council and national education bodies. He holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, awarded for a sustained record of leading learning that is effective and inclusive. He co-founded the UK Precision Surgery Network, spun out of the former NIHR Oncology Translational Research Collaboration, and convenes academic surgeons across eight biomedical research centres. He leads CLEARER, a precision-surgery collaboration continuing the network's work on fluorescence-guided cancer surgery, and is developing CAIRN, a community programme accelerating a cancer-detection device toward adoption in under-served populations. International leadership He was invited by the International Society for Shared Decision Making to lead a global core outcome set for shared decision making, coordinating a consensus study across 20 countries. Commitment to capacity building He has supervised five NIHR doctoral fellows to completion. He brought the NIHR Methodology Internship scheme to Bristol, securing funding in its pilot and first rounds, and supervises clinical academic trainees across career stages, including an Advanced Clinical Practitioner apprenticeship. Industry links His industry partnerships include Cemplicity, for real-time measurement of patient experience across NHS systems, Concentric Health, which has licensed a core information set for surgical innovation, and Origin Sciences, for the translation of a colorectal cancer detection device.