Prof Patrick MacPhail, former Head of the Department of Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand, joined Right to Care in 2008 as a consultant.
His role as a consultant includes: advising  the learning evaluation division of Right to Care, providing strategic leadership, academic coordination, supervision of post-graduate researcher and participation in the publication output from the division.
He oversees the gathering of data for the purposes of Monitoring and Evaluation of Right to Care’s programmes. A key part of this is the use and development of TherapyEdge, a data capturing and clinical decision-making tool. Patrick is tasked with coordinating the interaction between TherapyEdge, ABL-SA (owners of TherapyEdge), and Right to Care, to enable the continued development the software.
Patrick has made substantial improvements to the management and handling of data using TherapyEdge. Major advances include improved methods of recording clinical data and enhanced export of data from TherapyEdge-HIV.
Patrick supervises activities of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division of the Clinical HIR Research Unit, including projects that have an impact on Right to Care’s programmes.
He provides support for the Mpumalanga site office, providing guidance to the provincial leader for the development of the provincial programme.
Both local and international post-graduate students are working with CHRU. Patrick is presently engaged with the AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) in developing clinical trials for the treatment of Kaposi sarcoma in resource-limited countries.
Patrick is a Professor Emeritus and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine and is a registered Medical Oncologist. Patrick’s experience includes being an examiner in medicine for, among others, the College of Physicians (College of Medicine), and the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Cape Town, and KwaZulu Natal.
His previous research experience centred on iron metabolism and he has authored or co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 60 abstracts.
Patrick’s qualifications include a BSc (Wits 1967), an MBBCh (Wits 1971), and a PhD (Wits 1982). He is a Fellow of the South African College of Physicians (1979) and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (1996). He is a member of a number of international and local professional societies.