Ron Mann's scientific contributions as the second Director of the DSRU

Ron Mann became the second Director of the Drug Safety Research Unit (DSRU) in 1994. His task as the successor to Bill Inman, the charismatic founder and first Director of the Unit, could not have been easy at the outset. However, Ron came to the DSRU armed with many years of experience as a clinician, senior pharmaceutical physician and head of pharmacovigilance at the Medicines Division at the Department of Health (which later became the MCA and now the MHRA), and thus possessed both the scientific credentials as well as the networking and political skills to enable him to carry out the job. While his relatively short period from 1994 to 1999 at the DSRU was affected by health problems and the loss of his third wife, he made significant achievements in two major areas: advancing the method of Prescription‐Event Monitoring (PEM) and developing collaborations with colleagues to conduct large pharmacoepidemiological studies both nationally and internationally. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.