19 May 2026
Remembering Richard Lehman (1950–2026)
By Professor Sylvie Delacroix, Director, Centre for Data Futures
It is with great sadness that the Centre for Data Futures shares the news that our colleague Richard Lehman, Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre, passed away on 14 May after a period of illness.
Richard came to the Centre in early 2026, having been Professor of the Shared Understanding of Medicine at the University of Birmingham, and before that a GP for many decades. For more than twenty years, he wrote a weekly review of the medical literature, first at the BMJ and latterly at BJGP Life: a labour of attention and generosity that shaped how a generation of doctors read their own field. He described his late-career focus, with characteristic precision, as a return to his roots: "the needs of ill people quite specifically."
At the Centre, Richard was developing a subgroup with Alan Cribb under the title he coined ‘Vulnerable Conversations’. Its aim was to explore how generative AI is reshaping the relationships between people who are unwell and the professionals who care for them. He was a co-author of the 2025 BMJ series on triadic care (Fraile Navarro et al., BMJ 391, e085325), and one of the earliest voices insisting that AI in healthcare must be shaped by, and answerable to, the most needy and least articulate.
Those of us who knew him will remember something else too. Richard was, above all, a connector. He enthusiastically introduced people he thought should know one another, then stepped back and let the conversations flourish. He read everything. He responded with warmth, generosity, and a sharpness that could cut to the heart of an argument in a single sentence. Many of the collaborations now central to the Centre's healthcare work began with an email from Richard.
The Vulnerable Conversations theme will continue, and will carry his name. The community he gathered around him will continue. We hold his family in our thoughts.