Professor Caroline McIntosh

Professor Caroline McIntosh is Established Professor of Podiatric Medicine and Head of the School of Health Sciences. Caroline led on the establishment of the first school of podiatry in the Republic of Ireland successfully steering this new programme through first and subsequent professional validations.

Caroline is a podiatrist by background and before taking up post in academia she was previously employed as a senior podiatrist in the NHS where she specialised in vascular disease. Caroline has a specialist interest in tissue viability, vascular and diabetic foot disease and she holds an honorary contract as a Diabetes Specialist Podiatrist in University Hospital Galway.

Caroline has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of tissue viability, particularly on the diabetic foot, and has presented at national and international conferences. Caroline co-edited the text “Lower Extremity Wounds: A problem-based Approach”, and undertook her PhD, in 2007, in the need to build and disseminate evidence-based wound care. Caroline has acted as co-applicant and Principal Investigator (PI) for a number of clinical trials including two randomised controlled trials of topical therapies for wounds. She is currently Co-Director and founding member of the Alliance for Research and Innovation in Wounds at the University of Galway.

Prof. McIntosh was PI for a large multi-centre randomised controlled trial in conjunction with York’s Trials Unit (The EverT Study- Effective Verrucae Treatments). She was a co-applicant on a successful grant for Health Technology Appraisal funding (£1,107,109) for a randomised trial of a multifaceted podiatry intervention for falls prevention. Prof. McIntosh was co-applicant for Health Research Board funding (€250,000) for a study entitled “Improving Sensory Function of Participants with Diabetes using Imperceptible Electrical Noise Stimulation”.

She is currently co-lead on an HRB CDA grant of €1.5 million entitled DFD PRIMO (Diabetic Foot Disease, from prevention to improved patient outcomes) which has funded six PhD scholarships in diabetic foot disease. Caroline has successfully supervised seven postgraduate research students to completion and is currently supervising a further seven postgraduate research students primarily in the area of diabetic foot disease.

Caroline was Chairperson of the Western Branch of the Wound Management Association of Ireland (WMAI) from 2009-2015 and President of WMAI from 2013-2015. She was Chair of the Diabetic Foot Working Group for the HSE National Wound Management Guidelines (2018) for Ireland. She is a member of the Podiatry Registration Board, CORU and a member of the Professoriate of the College of Podiatry, London, U.K. She was Associate Editor for Trials journal from 2015-2020 and she is honoured to be a member of the International Working Group for the Diabetic Foot for the 2023 clinical guidelines on wound healing interventions.