Prof John Ainsworth

Overview

John Ainsworth is Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Manchester where he is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Health Informatics. He is involved in numerous research projects, but with one common aim - to use computing and information technology to improve the health of the population. He is also Deputy Director of the MRC Health eResearch Centre, part of the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research and is the Director of the Connected Health Cities Coordinating Centre.
John works at the intersection of information technology and healthcare research focusing on applying information technology to improving health care and includes:

• Harnessing computing technology to enhance data science   
• Using information technology to improve health services
• Applying emerging computing technologies to create novel interventions

Biography

John's career history is not that of a conventional academic; he has a diverse education (BSc Physics, MSc Cognitive Science, PhD Health Informatics) and worked for ten years in industry prior to his academic career. John has worked for Bell Northern Research, Cisco Systems and PA Consulting Group in a wide range of R&D roles in telecoms and data networking. John's first academic appointment was as Senior Research Fellow in 2011. In 2015 John completed a PhD in Health Informatics, long after he had established himself as an independent researcher with a research group of over 20 R&D staff. John was appointed Professor of Health Informatics in 2016. He has been the Deputy Director of the MRC Health eResearch Centre for the last three years and has a leadership role in the national Farr Institute. Most recently, the ideas expounded in his paper “Combining Health Data Uses to Ignite Health System Learning”, on the reorganisation of data flows in the NHS to create a Learning Health System have been funded for implementation by the Department of Health in the £20m Health North - Connected Health Cities pilots, for which John is now the Director. John has been involved in two spin-out companies to develop and commercialise his research - North West eHealth (www.nweh.co.uk) and Affigo CIC (www.affigo.io).

Qualifications

• BSc (Hons) Physics
• MSc Cognitive Science
• PhD Health Informatics

Memberships of committees and professional bodies

UK Council for Health Informatics Professions (Reg. No. 10396)