David is a reader in musculoskeletal health and co-leads the MSK research group within the Research Centre for Health at GCU, joining in 2022 from Edinburgh Napier University where he was formally associate professor of physiotherapy. He completed his PhD in orthopaeadic outcomes at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and worked there for a further 10-years as a postdoctoral researcher, then fellow, and principle investigator with the orthopeadic engineering group.

His primary research interests are in measuring 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.

He is an active researcher who has collaborated to win >£6 million of research funding from Versus Arthritis, EPSRC, NIHR and industry partners which has resulted in >100 publications to date. Recently completed studies include the TRIO RCT, which was a multi-centre UK trial evaluating whether physiotherapy targeted to patients predicted to perform poorly following total knee replacement could improve outcomes, as well as the CASINO and TRIMAX RCTs, which evaluated hip and knee replacement outcomes respectively. He is currently leading the ROBOTA project, evaluating patient outcomes following robotic-assisted hip and knee surgery, 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 physiotherapy management in young patients with knee osteoarthritis. 

David in an honorary fellow at the University of Aberdeen (epidemiology, arthritis and pain research) and has active research collaborations with colleagues at the University of Zurich and the Medical University of Innsbruck (patient reported outcomes, methodological research, and predictive modelling). He enjoys supporting postgraduate research degrees, and has supervised 7 to completion. He has 6x active PhD students, investigating applied clinical projects.

He currently leads the Scotland consortia of the Community for Allied Health Professions Research (CAHPR), and is a trustee of the British Orthopaedic Research Society. He is associate journal editor for research methodlogy at the Knee, having been on the editorial board of BMC musculoskeletal disorders for a number of years.