Internationally accomplished researcher joins Centre for Health Informatics

10 Jun 2014

The Centre for Health Informatics has extended their senior team with the appointment of Dr Niels Peek as Reader

Dr Peek joins the Health eResearch Centre (HeRC) and the Centre for Health Informatics at an exciting time of growth, in which the team in Manchester are leading international research regarding the use of health data to drive large-scale patient and public benefits. Dr Peek will help crystallise key research projects across the Centre and aid the development of HeRC’s Masters Programme; designed to train the next generation of Health Informaticians.

Arriving from the Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam, Dr Peek brings with him a wealth of experience having most recently focused his research on computerised support systems, e-health systems, and the quality improvement of healthcare methods.

Having studied Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Dr Peek received his PhD in Computer Science from Utrecht University and has since co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications.

Since 2003, Dr Peek has led a large-scale collaborative project which focused on improving the quality of cardiac rehabilitation in the Netherlands. The study, which involved over 30 hospitals along with a wide range of stakeholder groups across the public, private and voluntary sectors, showed how the real-time use of computer generated data can help improve the decision making of cardiovascular professionals, ultimately leading to better healthcare for patients.

More recently Dr. Peek has also organized a series of meetings on methods for data mining and intelligent data analysis in Biomedicine. He chairs the working group on Data Mining and Big Data Analytics from the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), and chairs the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME) board which organizes an international conference on this topic every two years.

Prof. Iain Buchan, Director of the Health eResearch Centre (HeRC) at the Centre for Health Informatics said: “All of the HeRC team at Manchester are delighted to extend a warm welcome to Niels Peek. He joins us at an exciting time of growth, as we build the methodology hub for the UK’s Farr Institute for Health Informatics research. Niels’ reputation in the field of Health Informatics research and eHealth innovation is well-known and his work will help to inspire a new cadre of Informaticians here, advancing health and care through technical excellence.”

On his appointment within the Centre, Dr. Peek said: “Optimising the use of information and knowledge in everyday clinical practice is one of the key opportunities for improving healthcare services for patients. It is both a privilege and an opportunity to take up this position at the Health eResearch Centre and I look forward to joining Dr Iain Buchan’s team and using my experience to help further this important area of medical research.”