Professor MacDonald's research covers the efficacy, benefits and risks of medicines and cardiovascular disease: clinical trials and drug epidemiology
His research interests are hypertension, cardiovascular disease, pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety. He is the current president of the British Hypertension Society, past president of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology, a past member of the Pharmacovigilance Committee on Safety of Medicine and the current director of Tayside Medicines Monitoring Unit (MEMO) which has access to the MEMO database and to the GPRD database. He is also an elected member of the European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP) and is the research director of the Regional Cardiovascular Risk Clinic (a European Society of Hypertension designated centre of excellence). He also directs the Hypertension Research Centre at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School.
He is currently the principal investigator of two large, multi-national, multi-centre streamlined safety studies; the Standard care versus Celecoxib Outcomes Trial (SCOT) and the Febuxostat versus Allopurinol Safety Trial (FAST). He is also on the executive committee for the ALL-HEART study and the PATHWAY I, 2 and 3 studies.
Professor MacDonald has published extensively on drug safety especially the safety of non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). He has also published many studies of hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disorders.