{"entity":{"id":"hywel-williams","kind":"person","name":"Hywel Williams","aka":[],"tldr":"The Nottingham epidemiologist who founded British evidence-based dermatology and ran the trial that answered whether a cream can replace surgery for the commonest cancer there is.","summary":"Hywel Williams trained in medicine at Charing Cross Hospital and in dermatology in London, took an MSc in clinical epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a Wellcome Trust fellowship, and was appointed to Nottingham in 1994, becoming Foundation Professor of Dermato-Epidemiology in 1998. He founded the Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology there and still co-directs it with Kim Thomas.\n\nFor skin cancer his central contribution is SINS, the multicentre non-inferiority randomised trial of excisional surgery against imiquimod 5% cream for nodular and superficial basal cell carcinoma at low-risk sites, which recruited 501 people at twelve UK centres between 2003 and 2007 and reported three-year results in the Lancet Oncology in 2014 and five-year results in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology in 2017. He directed the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme from 2015 to 2020, was awarded the British Association of Dermatologists' Sir Archibald Gray medal in 2017 and an OBE in 2021, and his university page records that he has published over 640 peer-reviewed articles.","asOf":"2026-09-25","links":[{"label":"University of Nottingham profile","url":"https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/medicine/people/hywel.williams"},{"label":"Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology","url":"https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/cebd/index.aspx"}],"tags":["uk","trialist","skin","dermatology"],"related":[],"cancers":["basal-cell-carcinoma","skin-cancer"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":["sins-trial"],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Professor of Dermato-Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology, University of Nottingham","specialisms":["Dermato-epidemiology","Randomised trials in skin disease","Systematic reviews"],"profiles":[{"label":"University of Nottingham profile","url":"https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/medicine/people/hywel.williams"},{"label":"Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology","url":"https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/cebd/index.aspx"}],"papers":[]},"route":"/people/hywel-williams/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"basal-cell-carcinoma","kind":"cancer","name":"Basal cell carcinoma","route":"/cancers/basal-cell-carcinoma/"},{"id":"skin-cancer","kind":"cancer","name":"Skin cancer (all types)","route":"/cancers/skin-cancer/"}],"trial":[{"id":"sins-trial","kind":"trial","name":"SINS (surgical excision against imiquimod cream for basal cell carcinoma)","route":"/trials/sins-trial/"}],"institution":[{"id":"nottingham-cancer-centre","kind":"institution","name":"Nottingham University Hospitals Cancer Centre (City Hospital)","route":"/institutions/nottingham-cancer-centre/"}]}}