Dr Nathan Brendish
BSc MBBS MRCP DMCC PhD
NIHR Clinical Lecturer, Specialist Registrar in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine
Profile page(s)
Dr Nathan Brendish is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases & General Internal Medicine. His research interests focus on the clinical impact of point-of-care testing for infectious diseases.
Dr Brendish started his research career as a study physician in the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility, working on malaria vaccine trials. He has led several molecular point-of-care testing clinical trials within Professor Tristan Clark’s research group resulting in multiple publications in Lancet series journals among others. He was seconded to Public Health England, and later NHS Test and Trace, for several months in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Landmark publications:
Brendish NJ, Tanner AR, Poole S, et al. Combined RT-PCR and Host Response Point-of-Care Testing in Patients Hospitalised with Suspected COVID-19: A Prospective Diagnostic Accuracy Study. Infect Dis Ther 2022; 11: 1267–80.
Brendish NJ, Poole S, Naidu VV, et al. Clinical impact of molecular point-of-care testing for suspected COVID-19 in hospital (COV-19POC): a prospective, interventional, non-randomised, controlled study. Lancet Respir Med 2020; 8: 1192–200.
Clark TW, Beard KR, Brendish NJ, et al. Clinical impact of a routine, molecular, point-of-care, test-and-treat strategy for influenza in adults admitted to hospital (FluPOC): a multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled trial. Lancet Respir Med 2020; 9: 419–29.
Brendish NJ, Poole S, Naidu VV, et al. Clinical characteristics, symptoms and outcomes of 1054 adults presenting to hospital with suspected COVID-19: A comparison of patients with and without SARS-CoV-2 infection. J Infect 2020; 81: 937-943.
Brendish NJ, Malachira AK, Armstrong L, et al. Routine molecular point-of-care testing for respiratory viruses in adults presenting to hospital with acute respiratory illness (ResPOC): a pragmatic, open-label, randomised controlled trial. Lancet Respir Med 2017; 5: 401–11.
Impact example:
Based on the work of Dr Brendish and others within Professor Tristan Clark’s group, molecular point-of-care testing for COVID-19 has now become the standard-of-care for patients admitted to Southampton General Hospital’s Acute Medicine Unit. Similarly, the FebriDx fingerprick point-of-care testing device has become a powerful triage tool, used as standard-of-care in Southampton’s Emergency Department.