Ray Fitzpatrick

Ray Fitzpatrick directs a programme of research in health services research and the measurement of health outcomes.  He is an investigator with colleagues in Oxford and elsewhere in a number of large multi-centre trials of medical, surgical and service innovations to improve outcomes for long term conditions funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and DH.  He is deputy director of a newly established DH-funded research unit with health economist colleagues at LSE and Personal Social Services Research Unit, Kent to improve the evidence on quality and outcomes for long term conditions, and to examine scope for integration across health and social care.  This work currently includes modelling of future trends for disability in the population.  His group’s long term collaboration with Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences produced the Oxford scores, now mandated in the NHS and widely used around the world, and the source of a number of new research collaborations on NHS service improvement. Other research, for the Department of Health, examines the role of patient reported experience and outcomes measures to inform commissioning.  As national programme director for NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research, he is a member of NIHR’s main strategy board.

Prior to moving to Oxford in 1986, he was a lecturer in the Academic Department of Psychiatry, Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London and from 1975-78 a research officer, Department of Neurological Sciences, St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School. He was a member of Council, MRC, 1998-2003 and served as panel member or chair in the Research Assessment Exercises of 2001 and 2008. He is a Fellow, Academy of Medical Sciences. He is Director, NIHR Health Services Research Programme and (from 2004-2011) Chair, Scientific Committee, National Prevention Research Initiative. During 2008 and 2009, he chaired the Public Health Research Board, Office of Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR).