Consultants
Dr Andrew Hanrahan
Dr Andrew Hanrahan has been at the RHN since April 2014 having spent the previous six years in Cork, setting up specialist rehabilitation services for the region and national clinical pathways through the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dublin.
Andrew has been on the Specialist Register for Rehabilitation Medicine since 2008 after having trained within the Oxford Deanery. After undergraduate training and formative experiences as a missionary doctor in Southern India, he did his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and further research in Stroke at Bournemouth, completing a Fellowship in Cerebrovascular Disease in 1997.
Andrew now specialises in neurological rehabilitation and neuro-palliative management of complex neurological disabilities and disorders of consciousness. He is on the national guideline development group (RCP PDOC 2020). He did an MA in Medical Ethics and Law at King’s College London is extensively involved in the clinical, ethical and legal aspects of these conditions, and is the clinical End of Life Care Lead.
Andrew lectures at and is the external advisor to the MA Programme (CBET Centre for Bioethics and Emerging Technologies) at St Marys University Twickenham, and is on the editorial board of New Bioethics. He also lectures annually on the MSc programme at University College Cork, having helped set up the module on amputee rehabilitation. He is involved in many quality improvement projects at the RHN, medical undergraduate teaching, the Putney Nurse programme, and various Hospital and Board Committees.
Dr Judith Allanson
Dr Judith Allanson joined the RHN in January 2022. Judith graduated from Christs College, Cambridge, with a degree in Medical Sciences tripos with Pharmacology in 1983. She went on to complete a BM BSC at Wolfson College, Oxford, and a doctorate at Christs College.
Judith’s extensive experience in neuro-rehabilitation and rehabilitation medicine has largely been gained through her work in major trauma centres, with regional neuro-trauma outpatients and community-based work with neuro-rehabilitation teams like Headway. She has worked as Clinical Lead for Rehabilitation and as Interim Clinical Director for the EoE MYNetwork.
Judith most recently spent 11 years at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where she established an evidence-based Community Head Injury Service as part of a five-year Eveyln Trust Fund neuro-rehabilitation project. This project saw Judith develop the head injury rehabilitation pathway in Cambridgeshire as well as a research body to inform further rehabilitation interventions and service development.
Judith has been invited to speak at several national conferences on various aspects of prolonger disorders of consciousness to wide audiences, most recently about Developments in research assessment of PDOC at Holy Cross annual conference on PDOC, 2018. Judith’s latest publication is Rehabilitation available for trauma patients in EoE trauma units. MTN Commissioned survey April 2021. J Allanson, H Young.
Judith holds a fellowship at the Royal College of Physicians and is a consultant at Askham Village Community.
Dr Silvia Antiga
Dr Silvia Aniga joined the RHN in January 2018. Silvia graduated from the University of Bologna in Italy in 2008. Having completed her thesis on ‘Functional surgery of equinovarus foot and gait analysis, Silvia chose to specialise in her clinical focus of rehabilitation medicine.
Silvia went on to complete physical and rehabilitation medicine training in Bologna and Salisbury at the Duke of Cornwall Spinal Cord Injury Centre in 2014, where she completed a thesis on CT Pulmonary angiography and risks factors for the diagnosis of PE in SCI patients.
Silvia has been a member of the European Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine Board since 2015 and has also completed a Master of Laws (LLM) in Medical Law and Ethics at Leicester University in November 2020.
Silvia is a member of the British Medical Association and regularly attends conferences at the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine.
Throughout her time at the RHN, Silvia has contributed to the development of our brain injury, long-term care and specialised services. Silvia was integral to the design and implementation of an audit system which ensures compliance of our staff in completing NEWS charts. This is part of the hospital service improvement plan to implement communication between the RHN and acute hospitals, to make the escalation process more efficient.
In June 2018 and May 2019, Dr Antiga presented lectures on “Managing Complications in Patients Admitted in Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness” and “An Interdisciplinary Team Approach to the Management of Patients in Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness”.
Dr Philippe Jolliet
Dr Philippe Jolliet has been with the RHN since 2019 and specialises in intensive care and general internal medicine.
Philippe graduated from the University of Geneva in 1981 and he held several significant posts before arriving at the RHN, including as Head of the Multidisciplinary Intensive Care and Burn Service University Hospital (Geneva, Switzerland).
Philippe has special interests in mechanical ventilation and respiratory medicine and physiology. His research is extensive, but mainly explores mechanical ventilation, acute respiratory distress syndrome, obstructive disease and the use of helium in obstructive respiratory failure.
At the RHN, Philippe has developed initiating protocols for the management of specific clinical problems. He is currently setting up two separate research programs focused on clinical issues and quality of life.
His work at the hospital contributes to the implementation of an enhanced patient monitoring system and he works closely with the senior nursing teams to further develop the Jack Emerson Centre (JEC) as a centre of excellence for the care of long-term ventilated patients.
Dr Ashraff Ali
Dr Ashraff Ali joined the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability (RHN) in 2003.
Ashraff graduated from the University of Madras in 1976. He completed his post-graduate Internal Medicine and Cardiology training at the Hammersmith Hospital in London and obtained a Diploma in Cardiology in 1983. He had further training in Cardiology and Rehabilitation Medicine in the Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia which focussed on head injury and spinal cord injury rehabilitation. He obtained the Diploma in Rehabilitation from the Royal College of Physicians, London in 1996.
At the RHN Ashraff was instrumental in developing the rehabilitation services and was involved in the Ventilator Service development until 2019.
Ashraff specialises in Neuro-rehabilitation of complex Neuro-disability and Disorders of Consciousness. He has developed the Spasticity Service and Sialorrhea Clinic at the RHN.
Ashraff has taken part in research on functional MRI in Disorders of Consciousness in collaboration with Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. He lectures regularly in courses held at the RHN and medical undergraduate teaching. He was the Responsible Officer for RHN until March 2022 and interim Medical Director from August to October 2021.
Dr Patrick Byrne graduated from University College Dublin in 1997, worked for 2 years in Ireland before moving to the UK to undertake GP training in Cambridge where he spent 10 years.
Subsequently, he trained and accredited in General Internal Medicine in Edinburgh and spent 13 years in rural Scotland treating the whole spectrum of general medicine that might present to an acute hospital. He is therefore both a Consultant Physician and a GP, and continues to practice, appraise and revalidate in both roles.
Patrick has also been involved in teaching and training for his entire career, both undergraduate medical students and post-graduate doctors in training. He has been an examiner for the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and currently holds an Honorary Lecturer post with the National Heart and Lung Institute, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London. He completed an MSc in Medical Education in 2021 with his dissertation exploring the use of reflection as an educational intervention for Consultants and GPs in the UK.
He has been elected to Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of both Edinburgh and London and also the Royal College of General Practitioners.