Simon Maxwell is Professor of Student Learning/Clinical Pharmacology and Prescribing at the University of Edinburgh, where he has led in developing e-Learning strategies to support education in this area. He is also the Director of the University’s Masters in Internal Medicine programme. His clinical responsibilities include supervision of acute medical admissions and the management of outpatients at increased cardiovascular risk. He was formerly Vice-President of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) and is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in London and Edinburgh and of the Higher Education Academy. He led the development of and is Medical Director of the Prescribing Safety Assessment, a joint initiative by the BPS and Medical Schools Council delivering a national assessment of prescribing for all UK medical students. This process has now been adopted in several other countries. He is co-lead for the Pharmacology Education Project (PEP), an IUPHAR initiative to provide freely accessible learning materials for students of the pharmacological sciences in resource-poor countries.