John Powell

In many ways I have had a very conventional career path: a medical degree from Cambridge, training in psychiatry, and then the excellent public health training scheme in Oxford. My interest was always in academia and after completing my specialist registrar training, and a MSc and PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, I worked as a senior fellow in health technology assessment at Southampton University. After two years I moved to Warwick University, and after six more years I was promoted to Professor of Public Health. While at Warwick I retained a strong interest in NHS and health policy issues, and worked part-time as clinical director of the NHS website. In 2012 I decided to combine a part-time academic role at Oxford University, with a part-time Consultant Clinical Adviser role at NICE. My area of interest is digital health (sometimes called e-health), examining how to harness digital tools to improve health and health care. Having spent more than fifteen years ploughing a sometimes lonely furrow in this emerging area, it is pleasing to see it now becoming mainstream in both research and policy arenas. I also have a strong interest in television and film and have worked as a medical advisor on various programmes including Downton Abbey, Casualty, 1909, Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen, An Inspector Calls, and SS-GB.