As a charity, we are fortunate to enjoy good relationships with clinicians up and down the country, representing a wide range of clinical specialities involved in haemochromatosis care.

Look out for our publications marked "CAP Reviewed & Approved", which have been rigorously reviewed to ensure medical accuracy, clinical effectiveness and helpful information for people with genetic haemochromatosis.

Our clinical advisors include

Dr Susan Hancock

Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners

Dr Susan Hancock received an MB BS from University College London in 1980 and has gone on to receive qualifications from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists, and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Dr Hancock is a practicing General Practitioner and post graduate medical educator for the North West Deanery Post Graduate Department of General Practice for over 20 years in the role of GP tutor for Blackburn and Course organiser for East Lancs Training scheme.

She started at UCLAN Medical School as a Problem based Learner facilitator Sept 2015 at the beginning of the Medical School. Dr Hancock is now responsible for facilitating Professionalism, Ethics, Portfolio Based Learning and Communication skills for year one MB BS.

Dr Patrick Kiely PhD, FRCP

Consultant Rheumatologist, St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

At St George’s, Dr Kiely runs special interest clinics for patients with rheumatoid arthritis, vasculitis, myositis and haemochromatosis arthropathy. He was a member of the NICE guideline development group for rheumatoid arthritis. He has served on several British Society for Rheumatology committees and is currently an Associate editor for Rheumatology.  His research interests include the fields of rheumatoid arthritis outcomes, biologic optimisation, myositis, ILD and haemochromatosis arthropathy.

Dr Kiely was a co-founder of the Haemochromatosis Arthropathy Research Initiative (HARI), with rheumatologists from France, Germany, Australia and Austria. HARI has produced patient information materials on how to diagnose the condition, management of symptoms (including pain) and bone health. In 2018 HARI was accepted by the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) as a formal study group and current work of the group is the development of a systematic literature review as the first step to development of classification criteria for haemochromatosis arthropathy.

“I am very pleased to work with this fantastic patient society that does so much to support those with Haemochromatosis. The arthritis is a huge challenge for many and together with HUK we hope to improve this situation” – Dr Patrick Kiely

Prof Dr Jorg Schmidtke of Hannover Medical School (Germany)
 
Professor Schmidtke is a clinical geneticist with a long-standing interest in HFE genetics. He is presently undertaking a study aimed at identifying HFE modifier genes as a therapeutic target.

Dr Schmidtke’s 2022 paper “Twenty‐Five Years of Contemplating Genotype‐Based Hereditary Hemochromatosis Population Screening “ concluded : "With all experts in agreement about HH being a frequent disease, completely curable at low cost when detected early enough, we should not wait another 25 years to implement suitable [screening] measures.".

Jorg has an enviable track-record of publication over many years, with a particular interest in genetics and HFE. 

Professor Edward (Ted) Fitzsimons

Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor, University of Glasgow Medical School

Professor Fitzsimons is a well-respected clinician and researcher who has worked closely with Haemochromatosis UK, and has acted as a speaker at several HUK meetings and most recently at the HUK conference 2019 and keynote speaker to deliver the Fernau Lecture at the HUK Venesection Study Day 2019.

He was lead author of the new British Society for Haematology (BSH) clinical guidelines for the treatment of iron overload and is a medical adviser to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Genetic Haemochromatosis.

In 2015 Professor Fitzsimons designed and worked on a study with a team of doctors and scientists which researched and developed a hospital laboratory pathway to improve the diagnosis of genetic haemochromatosis in primary care. The research, which was originally published in the journal of Clinical Pathology, was also incorporated into the new BSH Guidelines which was published in the British Journal of Haematology in 2018.

Over the years Professor Fitzsimons has spoken to the media as a leading expert on haemochromatosis and through this has appeared on such shows as BBC Radio 4 Inside Health and BBC Radio Scotland.

Prof Dr Michael Krawczak of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel (Germany)
 
Professor Krawczak is an expert in statistical and population genetics, having previously established one of Germany’s largest genetic biobanks in 2003 (a forerunner to the UK Biobank).
 
A mathematician by training, Michael has authored or co-authored almost 400 academic papers since 1985; his research interests span mathematics, probability, genetics, population statistics, medico-ethics and AI. 
 
Michael has recently been collaborating with us to analyse our Northern Ireland screening dataset. Initial findings show that our study methodology delivered a perfect Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, which demonstrates that our sampling methodology has delivered a dataset without population bias, a significant statistical finding.

Prof Martin Delatycki of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne (Australia)
 
Professor Delatycki has a long-standing interest in HFE genetic screening. He was involved in two large scale haemochromatosis screening projects, one in the workplace (Haemscreen) and one in high schools (ironXS).

Martin recently led a patient-blinded randomised study of therapy for individuals with haemochromatosis and moderate iron overload that showed benefit of therapy for such individuals. He was one of the co-authors of the 2023 Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver guidelines on GH and is a regular contributor to Australian government policy on screening.

Dr. Nils Thorm Milman of the Digestive Disease Center K, Bispebjerg Hospital, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
 
Dr Milman specialises in internal medicine and has a long-standing interest in HFE, having previously been an advisor to the Danish GH association. Dr Milman is widely published with almost two dozen HFE papers to his name since 2013.

Nils was lead author on the Danish GH guidelines published in 2023 : “Typically, many patients experience a long and confusing course in the health system and encounter various doctors and various specialties before the diagnosis is confirmed, often in an advanced clinical stage...Since the symptoms and organ damages are often irreversible, it is important that treatment is started early, namely before symptoms and organ dysfunction have developed.”

Haemochromatosis UK is affiliated with Society for Endocrinology, an organisation that supports clinicians, scientists and nurses who work with hormones throughout their careers. They engage policy-makers, journalists, patients and the public with hormone science to encourage informed health decisions, and to demonstrate the value of endocrinology to the wider world and also maintains a public information website, You and Your Hormones.