For Doctors

Our aim is to be trusted by doctors to enable us to support patients in a safe, responsive, reliable and effective way.

Refer a Patient

By Doctors for Doctors to help patients

Sapphire Medical Clinics were formed by doctors for doctors. We aim to become a trusted partner of NHS medical professionals and support patients in using medicinal cannabis where other treatments have failed.

Our internationally renowned and respected consultants will assess patients within their area of expertise and if another conventional therapy is available that will be tried first.

Rigorous Prescribing Framework

There are three mechanisms by which Patients and Doctors are reassured that the highest standard of clinical practice and prescribing are upheld. These are:

1. All clinicians are trained to the highest level by international experts with experience in medicinal cannabis prescribing.

2. All clinicians receive bespoke and disease specific clinical and prescribing guidelines developed by Sapphire Medical Clinics using large data sets.

3. Following consultation, all patients are discussed at the central multidisciplinary team meeting involving all the clinicians.

Education

Our Doctors

All of our doctors have been through an intense training program to equip them with the skills required to prescribe this very complex and variable medicine. The program includes face-to-face sessions with an expert cannabis physician, telemedicine clinics with an experienced cannabis counsellor.

GPs and Consultants

For medical professional’s wishing to learn more about medicinal cannabis, we have put together a series of online modules (with examinations) which are CPD accredited in UK.

Link

Why we are safe

We have followed the guidance set by the GMC, MHRA, NHS England.

We have gone beyond this guidance to create our own rigorous Standard Operating Procedures, which are being ratified by the above organisations and will be published on our site in due course. This will guide the future use of medicinal cannabis by closely monitoring adverse events and change in patient  outcomes.

We have recruited experienced NHS consultants who are experts in their fields and will only see patients who they would see in their practice in the NHS.

We are aligned to the most up to date research and will continually monitor any new developments.

We will collect data on all of our patients with their consent and will form the first UK registry on medicinal cannabis. This will guide the future use of cannabis, adverse reactions and change in patient outcome to establish where this drug is of most use.

Sapphire Clinics Multidisciplinary Team

Dr Michael Platt

Dr Michael Platt MA MBBS FRCA FFPMRCA

Medical Director

Dr Platt has been a consultant and honorary senior lecturer in pain medicine and anaesthetics at Imperial College since 1991.

Following medical training in Australia, he undertook specialist training in anaesthetics and pain medicine in London. He is a professional and highly effective senior consultant in pain medicine and anaesthetics with over 23 years in senior clinical leadership and specialist roles. In his NHS practice he is a senior consultant at the Imperial Pain Clinic and is frequently referred complex patients from other specialists in the UK and abroad.

Professor Praveen Anand
MD, MA, FRCP

Neurology / Neuropathic Pain

Professor Praveen Anand is Professor of Clinical Neurology and honorary Consultant Neurologist at Imperial College London.

His medical education was at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and post-graduate training at the Hammersmith Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. His research focuses on pathophysiological and molecular mechanisms in human sensory neuropathies and chronic pain syndromes and he has studied medicinal cannabis for approximately 20 years. He runs an integrated tertiary referral clinic evaluating patients with treatment resistant neuropathic pain.

Dr Mark Weatherall
MBBC, FRCP, PhD, MA

General Neurology

Dr Mark Weatherall is a Consultant Neurologist at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

Vice-Chair of the British Association for the Study of Headache and a former Trustee of the Migraine Trust. He was a highly regarded historian of medicine before studying clinical medicine at Selwyn College, Cambridge University. His clinical practice includes the treatment of headache, migraine, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and numerous other neurological disorders.

Dr Shaheen Khan
BSc, MSc, MBBS, FRCP

Palliative Care

Dr Shaheen Khan is a Consultant in Palliative Care and Clinical Director at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

He graduated from Guy’s, Kings’ and St Thomas’ Medical School, having also been awarded a first class BSc in Neuroscience and subsequent research as part of his MSc in Palliative Care from Kings’ College London.

His interests include complex pain and symptom control, opioids and medicinal cannabis, advance care planning, and clinical leadership.

Dr Jonathan Hoare
MA, FRCP, PhD

Gastroenterology / General Medicine

Dr Hoare has been consultant in Gastroenterology and General Internal Medicine at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College, since 2006.

He trained at Cambridge University and St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1993. He has broad interests across gastroenterology, having gained his PhD as an MRC Research Fellow in molecular biology and been head of endoscopy for 11 years. His clinical practice encompasses all aspects of luminal gastroenterology including inflammatory bowel disease and functional problems such as irritable bowel while having specialist expertise in endoscopy.

Dr James Rucker
MBBS, BSc, MRCPsych, PhD

Psychiatry

Dr Rucker is a Clinician Scientist (senior clinical lecturer level) at The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.

and an honorary consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, specialising in mood disorders, psychopharmacology and novel drug treatments combined with psychotherapy.

Dr Sushil Beri
MBBS, MD, DNB, MRCPCH

Paediatric Neurology

Dr Beri is a consultant paediatric neurologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

He has trained at various university and teaching hospitals across the UK and he undertook his general paediatric training at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Dr Beri sees young children and adolescents with all kinds of acute and chronic neurological disorders including childhood epilepsy, faints and funny turns, migraines and other headaches, cerebral palsy, neuromuscular and neurogenetic disorders.

Leadership & Management Team

Multidisciplinary Team

This is formed of our seven specialist doctors and the doctors within the clinic. After the initial consult, if deemed appropriate the patient is discussed at the MDT and a final decision is made to issue a prescription or not.

Successful

Our team have already excelled in their careers individually and now have come together to offer the best, most responsible, expert led clinical assessment for medicinal cannabis.

Hassle Free Prescriptions

Once the prescription has been written the doctor has no further part in the payment or delivery of the medicine. Sapphire will organise this entirely to maintain the patient doctor relationship and ensure the prescription is fulfilled.