GMC Number: 4406459
Year & location of first qualification of first qualification: 1997, University of Bristol
Specialty: Rheumatology
Clinical interest: Autoimmune connective tissue disease, vascultis, Myositis, Interstitial lung disease, Systmic sclerosis.
Secretary: Pamela Stone (Southmead), Caroline Reed (Cossham)
Dr Harsha Gunawardena is a Consultant Rheumatologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at North Bristol NHS Trust and the University of Bristol. He was department clinical lead for four years and was appointed to Divisional Clinical Director for the Neurosciences and Musculoskeletal sciences Division in 2022.
He has led the North Bristol Connective Tissue Disease (CTD) and Vasculitis service since 2009 and provides a tertiary regional service for the southwest with a particular interest and expertise in inflammatory muscle diseases, CTD-lung disease and vasculitis.
He is an integral member of the Bristol-Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) service that runs regional multi-disciplinary team evaluation and combined clinic with the respiratory ILD team. He has a clinical and academic interest in all aspects of CTD and vasculitis, in particular myositis and ILD. His PhD was on the identification of novel autoantibody markers in myositis syndromes including ILD phenotypes and this work with the University of Bath research group was the first to describe several novel autoantibody markers. He has published widely on myositis overlap syndromes, autoantibodies, CTD-ILD, management reviews and guidelines.
He is a lead member of UK Myositis network and the British Society of Rheumatology Myositis Guidelines Group. He was British Society of Rheumatology Heberden committee member (2019 – 2023), which is responsible for organising the BSR annual conference and he co-convened and chaired the plenary Essentials sessions over several years. He is a former scientific advisor to the UK Juvenile Dermatomyositis Research Group.