Details

Mark Hannaford

Extreme Medicine Expert

Who am I

Mark Hannaford is the pioneer of programmes of social change and medical innovation. With experience derived from over 30 years’ experience working in worldwide most extreme environments, as an expedition leader, and as a former Special Forces soldier, including the worlds highest mountains, both Polar regions and the world’s driest deserts, Mark is the originator of an emerging medical sub-discipline of Extreme Medicine* which is helping to shape how medicine is delivered in disaster zones, on top of the worlds highest mountains by stimulating innovation, education and the exchange of ideas and knowledge.

As founder of World Extreme Medicine, Across the Divide Expeditions and prestigious Extreme Medicine Conference series, Mark is an innovative and entrepreneurial leader whose passion is to bring inspirational people together, building networks to improve standards in remote, disaster & humanitarian medicine.

From providing extreme medicine courses to medical professionals, to helping individuals raise more than £87m (UD$115m) to date for charitable courses, to building effective, collegiate and happy teams for corporate partners, Mark has built businesses and delivered experiences, courses and conferences that motivate and inspire.

Across the Divide was the first commercial organisation in the UK to employ doctors, provide comprehensive CME certified training, and to standardise medical kits deployed on all of its events and expedition and significantly lifted the standards of medical care provided by the adventure travel market.

Most recently, he has established the ‘Extreme Medicine’ Conference series. Developed specifically with medical professionals in mind, this ground-breaking conference series has been held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London and Harvard Medical School in Boston. The World Extreme Medicine conference challenges thinking, build bridges and shares new and more effective approaches to medical practice in the world’s most remote and austere locations.

Mark was honoured for his ‘pioneering work in the field of the promotion of expedition & wilderness medicine’ by the Royal Society of Medicine and also awarded BT’s Essence of the Entrepreneur Award in 2008 (for the creation of Across the Divide’s Corporate Social Responsibility arm). Mark was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2004; he was also elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in the early 1990s.

Mark ran the Logistics and Security on for the ‘Peoples Convoy’ to Syria, which raised £260,000 within 10 days and delivered equipment to build a children’s hospital to Aleppo the world’s first crowd-funded hospital

*Created medical sub-discipline of Expedition, Extreme & Wilderness Medicine* (Lancet Nov 15)

Mark has helped to raise £92m in charity fundraising:

Founder Extreme Medicine PGcert, PGdip, M.Sc Programme at the University of Exeter

Editor Journal of Extreme Physiology & Medicine

Founder of World Extreme Medicine

Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Exeter Medical School