Carmel Hughes PhD is a pharmacist by training and Professor in Primary Care Pharmacy at the School of Pharmacy. Her research interests focus the quality of drug use in older people particularly in long-term care setting and primary care, using a variety of study designs. She has published extensively on these topics and has led programmes of research in intervention studies in nursing homes for older people. Prof. Hughes was the first pharmacist to have been awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. She spent her fellowship year at the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research, Brown University where she collaborated with Profs. Kate Lapane and Vince Mor on pharmacoepidemiological studies in nursing homes.She was awarded the British Pharmaceutical Conference Medal for her research in September 2001.  She is the only pharmacist to have been awarded a National Primary Care Career Scientist Award from the Research and Development Division of the Department of Health in London. She has been a Cochrane Fellow, Editor for the EPOC group in the Cochrane Collaboration and was formerly the Joint Clinical Lead for the Northern Ireland Clinical Research Network.  She is an Associate Editor for Pilot and Feasibility Studies.  She is a member of the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research Commissioned Prioritisation Committee and a member of Sub-Panel 3 for REF 2020.

Prof. Hughes's research interests lie in care of older people. She has undertaken a range of studies in primary and long-term care, ranging from observational epidemiology to cluster randomised controlled trials, and qualitative exploratory studies. Emphasis has been on elucidating factors which may influence prescribing in settings, notably long-term care, such as structural characteristics, pharmacist interventions and more recently, treatment culture. She has also undertaken studies on MRSA prevalance in nursing homes, an infection control education intervention study in nursing homes and led the N. Ireland contribution to the European Surveillance on Antimicrobial Consumption Point Prevalence studies in nursing homes, part of a 22 EU country project. She has contributed to a number of Cochrane systematic reviews. She has a particular interest in interventions studies and the development of interventions using a systematic approach.  This has informed a number of ongoing studies on medicines optimisation for people with dementia, and the prescribing of appropriate polypharmacy in primary care. Prof. Hughes's research has been funded from a range of sources including goverment, charities and the EU.