Halena Khan BSc

First Class Bachelor of Science with Honours in Biomedical Science, 2021

Haléna Khan graduated with a First Class degree in Biomedical Science with Honours from the University of Birmingham in 2021, completing her final year research project with Dr Steve Thomas in the COMPARE research group in the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences. Her research looked at the effect of novel drugs on the cytoskeleton of platelets. After graduating, she worked for the medical devices company Nonacus performing automated real-time PCR COVID-testing during the pandemic. She then went on to work for University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) in the pathology laboratories at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, before deciding to pursue a role in research instead. Currently, Haléna works for UHB, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham as a Trial Administrator to support the DaRe2THINK clinical trial run by Professor Dipak Kotecha. This is a novel trial based in General Practices, using existing data from patient medical records. It is investigating the effect of giving patients with atrial fibrillation direct oral anticoagulants at a younger age to see whether this reduces their risk of developing long-term complications such as blood clots, strokes and dementia.

DaRe2THINK – a novel, digitally-based clinical trial using existing primary care data to investigate the effect of giving patients with atrial fibrillation a blood thinning medication at an earlier age to see if this prevents long-term complications such as dementia. 

Research Groups and Centres

• DaRe2THINK