Gillian is the Deputy Chief Executive at NICE, the Director of Health and Social Care, and a visiting professor at King's College London. Gillian trained in medicine at Leeds, and then spent several years researching the epidemiology of peripheral vascular disease at Edinburgh University. She was involved in the Cochrane Collaboration as it first became established, and still contributes as an editor to the EPOC Group (Effective Practice and Organisation of Care). She specialised in public health medicine, and worked as a consultant before moving to NICE in 2001. At NICE, Gillian has been responsible for the initial set up and running of the clinical guidelines programme, for establishing the NICE implementation function, and for setting up NHS Evidence. More recently she has been responsible for the transfer of the National Prescribing Centre into NICE, for establishing the NICE accreditation programme, and for new work on Quality Standards across health and social care.