David is a reader in musculoskeletal health in the Research Centre for Health at GCU, joining in 2022 from Edinburgh Napier University where he was associate professor of physiotherapy. Prior to this he was a Postdoctoral Researcher and then Fellow and Principle Investigator at the University of Edinburgh over a 10-year period and has collaborated on >£5 million of research grant funding from Versus Arthritis, EPSRC, NIHR and industry partners which has resulted in >90 publications to date.

He is an active researcher with honorary fellowships at the University of Edinburgh (linked to orthopaedic clinical trials), and at the University of Aberdeen (where he collaborates with the epidemiology group on osteoarthritis and pain research). His primary research interests are in measuring patient outcomes/physical function in osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal injury/disease, orthopaedic/rehabilitative interventions, predictive modelling, evaluating the psychometric properties of outcome questionnaires, and more generally in research methodology and clinical trials. Wider interests transcend musculoskeletal sciences and rehabilitation, from muscle stem cells and regeneration to kinematics and biomechanics.

Recently completed studies include the TRIMAX RCT which was a substantial longitudinal project over 10-years that evaluated whether patients achieved different outcomes with different types of knee replacement prostheses (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32228078/), and the TRIO RCT, which was a major UK national trial evaluating whether physiotherapy targeted to patients predicted to perform poorly following total knee replacement could improve outcomes (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33051212/).

He is currently leading the ROBOTA project at Spire Murrayfield hospital, a novel study evaluating patient outcomes following robotic-assisted hip and knee replacement, and leads the rehabilitation arm of the NIHR funded MOTION RCT with partners in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Warwick. This major trial is looking at whether joint realignment surgery outperforms active physiotherapy management in young patients with knee osteoarthritis; recruitment is planned to open in early 2023.

Alongside Edinburgh and Aberdeen, David has active research collaborations with colleagues at Cardiff University (wearable technology to assess pain), the University of Zurich and the Medical University of Innsbruck (novel patient reported outcomes and methodological research), and at Oxford University and the Virginia Commonwealth University (rehabilitation trials methodology and predictive modelling).

He sits on the Scotland hub of the Council for Allied Health Professions Research, the executive committee (as treasurer) of the British Orthopaedic Research Society, and is part of the EPSRC Osteoarthritis Technology network. For a number of years, he has been associate journal editor for BMC musculoskeletal disorders.