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Current DPhil Students

Deena Alasfoor, co-supervised with Professor Ray Fitzpatrick, Nuffield Department of Population Health, is studying ways of measuring access to primary health care for people with diabetes in Oman. 

Pradeep Virdee, co-supervised with Dr Jacqueline Birks and Professor Julietta Patnick, is based in the Centre for Statistics in Medicine, and is investigating the early detection of bowel cancer using routinely collected data.

Tim Holt

PhD FRCGP FRCP


Senior Clinical Research Fellow

  • General Practitioner, St Melor House Surgery, Amesbury

I am interested in all areas of applied research in primary care, and particularly in early intervention. This includes the identification of undiagnosed conditions (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer).

I am also interested in processes of care and their impact on health outcomes. An example was the HTA funded ESTEEM trial (led by University of Exeter) which investigated alternative triage arrangements for managing requests for same day appointments in general practice.

I led a cluster randomised trial of an automated reminder intervention (AURAS-AF) to promote uptake of oral anticoagulants in individuals with atrial fibrillation and at risk of stroke. This was funded by NIHR and involved a collaboration between the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham and Nottingham, the NHS, and the clinical software supplier EMIS.

Current work includes an investigation of a novel risk algorithm for undiagnosed bowel cancer based on primary care data, funded by the NIHR. I am a co-investigator on an NIHR study of fracture risk in people with intellectual disability.

I have experience of a range of methods including systematic reviews, epidemiological studies, randomised trials, and qualitative studies.