Professor William Whiteley

Associate Director for Brain Health, HDR UK | Stroke Catalyst Theme Lead, BHF Data Science Centre at BHF Data Science Centre.

Professor Will Whiteley is Associate Director for Brain Health at HDR UK and also serves as Associate Director and Stroke Catalyst Theme Lead at the BHF Data Science Centre.

Professor Will Whiteley is a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh and a consultant neurologist at NHS Lothian. He is funded by a personal fellowship from the CSO (Scottish Senior Fellowship) and was a senior research fellow at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford.

Will’s work focuses on elucidating the causes, treatments, and consequences of cerebrovascular diseases. The focus of his Stroke Catalyst theme is to enable approved research teams to use data from real world settings including hospitals, GPs, and pharmacies to improve understanding of stroke care and prevention, ultimately opening the door to better prevention and treatment.

In collaboration with colleagues at Imperial College London, University of Oxford, and the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University, Will has led the long term follow up of large randomised trials of vascular preventative treatments to assess new outcomes, particularly dementia, using electronic health records.

At the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, he has helped develop natural language processing algorithms to code brain imaging reports across Scotland, which he aims to use for national level epidemiology, quality improvement, and clinical trial recruitment.

Will is also developing trials that recruit patients based on electronic record algorithms, alongside automated methods for delivering therapies and measuring outcomes.