Home — EHAAT pioneer’s new era of research for Essex and Hertfordshire and beyond

04 September 2025

EHAAT pioneer’s new era of research for Essex and Hertfordshire and beyond

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A new era for research and scholarship

As our Centre for Excellence goes from strength to strength, our work around research and scholarship is about to enter a renewed, fresh and exciting era. We’re increasing our ability to study, describe, and learn even more from our patients with the intention of transforming care for the future.

Welcoming our new research leaders

In September we welcomed two extremely talented individuals to the team: Dr Stephen Tatlow, our new Research and Scholarship Coordinator, and Professor John Weinman, our Senior Research Advisor. John and Stephen joined our charity team bringing together the talents of our clinicians with renewed energy, putting us at the forefront of research in the specialty of pre-hospital medicine. Working with our senior paramedics, doctors and nurses, we have ambitious plans to help our patients even more.

About Professor John Weinman

John is an eminent Professor Emeritus at Kings College London and has had an extraordinary career in health psychology, having supervised over 70 PhD students, chaired multiple influential healthcare research groups, and developed a multitude of successful research programmes over decades of contribution to medicine.

Professor John Weinman C4X

About Dr Stephen Tatlow

Stephen is an academic with a career in music, especially focussing on music in healthcare. His PhD was from Royal Holloway, University of London, and he is passionate about bringing a structure to our academic activity, generating income opportunities and shaping our infrastructure so that we can take our research work to the next level.

Stephen Tatlow C4X

Our principles for future research

We have set out four guiding principles for our research strategy:

To make sure our patients and their loved ones are at the heart of our research strategy through strong Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE)
To underpin our research activity with the most accurate and detailed diagnostic capability so that future innovations are meaningful and targeted
To enable a ‘precision medicine’ verses a ‘one size fits all’ approach to every patient, nuancing care based on specific measurable need
To collaborate with others to achieve excellence in research and scholarship.

Why research matters in pre-hospital medicine

Dr Gareth Grier, Associate Medical Director and lead for EHAAT Centre for Excellence said, ”Many specialist areas of medicine have hundreds of years of research under their belt. This means that patients with many conditions are now receiving treatments that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, targeted at very specific areas of the disease which have been studied in detail. We believe that when someone is suddenly taken ill, for example with a cardiac arrest or a head injury, these precise treatments need to be delivered extremely rapidly, long before the patient arrives in hospital. Research in this area is key to creating the survivors of the future. Our future patients could be any of us, which is why our new strategy is so important.”

Focus on three key areas

We are concentrating our academic leadership on three key areas where there is great potential for progress:

Head injury
Cardiac arrest
Patient experience.

EHAAT has already delivered a track record of innovation in each area, and we’re about to take this further.

Dr Stephen Tatlow, research and scholarship coordinator said,

”I am delighted to join the team at EHAAT as the Research & Scholarship Coordinator. Research is very important to EHAAT as our research helps to improve the emergency medical care that people across the UK and around the world receive. In recent years, EHAAT has contributed to research projects on cardiac arrest, emergency blood transfusions, the wellbeing of emergency medical personnel, and many other important topics. I am looking forward to supporting our researchers and partners as we explore new ways to save lives and improve our community together”.

Professor John Weinman, senior research advisor said,

”I am very pleased and honoured to be appointed as the first Senior Research Advisor at EHAAT. In this role , I plan to not only facilitate and shape ongoing and future research but also ensure that it is widely disseminated and can inform clinical practice”.

Putting patients at the heart of research

As a professional organisation most recently rated Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission, we conduct our academic activity with the most stringent safeguards in place for our patients. We know that patients and their families very often want to support initiatives that improve care for them, and for others in the future. This is a vital part of healthcare in the 21st century, with hugely impressive guidance that ensures patients are involved in all decisions.

EHAAT team and former patients at Pre-hospital Care Course

Looking ahead

Dr Tony Joy, Medical Director at EHAAT said,

“The UK has been at the cutting edge of pre-hospital medicine for decades. We have a passion for going even further. It is thanks to the generosity of the donations made to our charity, that we can push our vital medical care forward. We’re so grateful to everyone who supports us and as we look ahead to the future, very much welcome any help that you are able to provide to fund our life-changing work. Thank you.”