FH is an inherited condition passed down through families and caused by one or more faulty genes. 

The condition makes your liver less able to remove excess ‘bad’ cholesterol, known as LDL. This means the LDL level in your blood can get too high and put you at risk of getting heart and circulatory disease at an early age if it’s not treated. 

FH is one of the most common inherited conditions and affects about 1 in every 250 people. It’s estimated that around 270,000 people in the UK have this treatable condition, but the majority of these people are unaware and therefore often not being effectively treated. 

Rob’s Story 

For Rob, this is a driving factor behind the work he does.  

Rob graduated in 2000 with a Nursing degree from Bangor University and, from there, started working on a cardiology ward before rotating into Coronary Care.  

It was after he completed his MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice that he became the specialist FH Nurse for North Wales in 2010. Since then, Rob has been actively assisting local research teams, looking into cardiovascular risk, genetics and prevention and has won several awards, including receiving the inaugural HEART UK Rianna Wingett Award and several British Heart Foundation awards. Rob also currently sits on Heart UK’s Healthcare Committee.    

He explained in an interview with the British Heart Foundation: “My role is focused on finding ‘index cases’ – a person who is eligible for the initial genetic test for FH. When we offer testing, we don’t know whether we are going to find a genetic mutation [an alteration in a gene] or not. 

“One of the challenges is to offer it to the right people. If we offered it to everyone with slightly raised cholesterol, we would be worrying lots of people unnecessarily, as well as spending a lot of money, but if we were too stringent, then we might miss people who do have FH. Thankfully, we have research-based guidelines that help us.” 

Rob is currently developing a National (Wales) Pathology Lipid Data Integration & FH / High Risk CVD Case Finding Model.  

This work has evolved from ‘real world data’, enabling a shift in North Wales from a baseline of 0.6% FH population detection (in 2010) to approximately 32% currently. This is now the highest FH population detection rate in the UK.  

Rob joined the National Cardiovascular Research Network as a member in December 2025 to further this work and collaborate with people from across the healthcare sector.  

He added: “I became a member of the NCRN to help drive high-quality cardiovascular research forward in Wales” 

Rob has also published several abstracts relating to FH and Lipids and is looking forward to working with others and becoming more active within research in Wales. 

If you’re interested in his work, want to collaborate or have some ideas, you can reach Rob at Robert.P.Gingell@wales.nhs.uk.