Short bio
Carl May is Professor of Health Systems Implementation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.
Carl works closely with clinical researchers and his work has focused on developing a richer understanding of the development and implementation of innovative healthcare technologies, and other complex healthcare interventions. He has made fundamental contributions to understanding the dynamics of late stage translation in healthcare. This includes the development of widely used conceptual frameworks for understanding implementation processes. These have helped us to understand the factors that promote and inhibit the effective adoption, implementation, and integration of innovations in health and care. More than 1700 published protocols, empirical studies, evidence syntheses, and theses, have been informed by Carl’s theoretical contributions.
Before moving to LSHTM in 2018, Carl held chairs in medical sociology at Newcastle (2000-2010), and in Healthcare Innovation at Southampton (2010-2018), and a Senior Visiting Scholarship at the University of Victoria, British Columbia (200. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK, and is a former NIHR Senior Investigator and ESRC Research Fellow. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and holds Honorary chairs in primary care at the University of Melbourne and Monash University in Australia.
IMPLEMENTATION SCIENCE: MORE THAN TRANSLATING EVIDENCE INTO PRACTICE
The field of implementation science seems to be growing, almost exponentially, with new journals, research centres, and funding schemes, appearing around the world. But can there truly be such a thing as a science of implementation? And, if there can be such a science, how can we find our way into it and share in its achievements? In this plenary talk, I will (a) set out some of the key features of implementation science as an empirical field of research and development; (b) consider some of its conceptual underpinnings – theoretical models that identify, characterize and explain the mechanisms that motivate and shape implementation processes; and (c), explore the ways that these may open doors for collaboration between Operational Researchers and Implementation Scientists.