Personal Profile
Born in England with Glaswegian parents, Mr Sutherland was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, Surrey and studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University. He obtained an honours degree in Medicine from Cambridge University in 1988 and qualified clinically from Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine in 1990.
Mr Sutherland began his early postgraduate training at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge where he worked under several famous names in medicine and surgery. He then rotated through hospitals in Cambridge, Oxford and Guy’s Hospital and King’s College, London before returning to his native roots in Glasgow, Scotland.
In 2000, Mr Sutherland was awarded a prestigious International Travelling Fellowship from the British Cardiac Society to undertake work towards his MD thesis at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. During this time, he developed the world’s first stem cell engineered artificial heart valve. He obtained a doctorate for this work and was awarded an MD from Cambridge University in 2006. Mr Sutherland first presented the results of this ground breaking work at a meeting of American heart surgeons in 2003. Since then, he has lectured or been invited to give lectures in Japan, India, USA, Europe and the UK on this and related subjects.
Mr Sutherland undertook training in minimally invasive robot assisted mitral valve surgery in North Carolina USA with Professor Randolph Chitwood. This unique experience sparked an interest in all things minimally invasive. Today, whenever a patient is referred for cardiac surgery, Mr Sutherland takes time to consider all options and strives to offer the least invasive means of performing cardiac surgery in each individual patient. His philosophy is that small and seemingly simple improvements in a procedure can deliver large and significant benefits for individual patients if delivered in a controlled manner with careful pre-operative planning and consideration.
In his spare time Mr Sutherland likes to read about business and current affairs. He consults for several medical device companies and is a board director of CardioPrecision Ltd., an early stage medical device company that he co-founded in 2007.
Mr Sutherland has obtained numerous awards and honours throughout his medical career. However, patients remain the focus of his activities.
