Dr Emma McFarlane works as a Technical Adviser at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in Manchester, UK. Having worked in Guideline Surveillance at NICE for over 10 years, Emma joined the COVID-19 team in 2020 due to her expertise in developing innovative methods in guidelines and surveillance. In this role, Emma led the development of methods and processes for COVID-19 surveillance. Emma also led on accelerated updates to COVID-19 guidelines as part of the living guideline process and developed NICE’s first living guideline on managing COVID-19.

Emma has a broad range of research interests and has recently led on several projects including development of a framework for prioritising recommendations for living guidelines and a project exploring the lifespan of living guideline recommendations.

Emma is currently the chair of the GIN updating guidelines working group, as well as being a member of the collaboration and GIME working groups.

Emma has a keen interest in collaboration and sharing best practice in evidence synthesis and is a steering group member of the Manchester Evidence Synthesis Network with responsibility for developing programmes for quarterly network events. This network brings together more than 190 health researchers, guideline developers and policy makers from across Greater Manchester West with an interest in evidence synthesis.