
Professor Richard Dobson
Professor of Medical Bioinformatics
- Head of Department
Biography
Richard Dobson is Professor of Medical Informatics at the IoPPN, Theme Lead for Informatics at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, and Professor of Biomedical and Health Informatics at the Institute of Health Informatics, UCL. He also co-chairs the Centre for Translational Informatics (CTI). The CTI is a partnership between university and healthcare sectors to facilitate the realisation of innovative healthcare applications.
His research is motivated towards enabling a “panor-omic” view of patients through the integration of genomics data with data derived from patient records, the exposome, social graphs, remote monitoring and imaging to develop strategies for P4 medicine, namely, medicine that is precise, predictive, preventative and participatory. The research has required the extensive use of computational approaches as such machine learning, the creation of software tools, development of a hospital development environments and large private cloud infrastructure with safe haven status to enable integration of patient datasets.
The work has led to a rich portfolio of academic collaborations, some key ones include TwinsUK, HipSci, the Alzheimer’s Research UK Drug Discovery initiative (ARUK-O3DI), GENAROAD, the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, and The Center for Behavioural Intervention Technologies, Northwestern, Chicago (CBITS).
His research has strong links with the technology and pharma industry, charities, and academia (notably Farr Institute for Health Informatics). Dobson sits on grant review panels & strategy groups, including the DoH 10-year strategy for Population & Health Services Research in mental health working group, Genomics England (EHR GeCIP co-lead), Canadian Foundation for Innovation, mental health charity MQ, NIHR and London GMCs. He is UCL and KCL’s informatics lead for several industrial and academic collaborations, including the EU IMI2 European Medical Information Framework (EMIF), IMI2 €22m Remote Assessment of Disease and Relapse (RADAR-cns.org), H2020 Kconnect (kconnect.eu), IMI2 BigData4BetterHearts, Intel-Turing Institute collaboration, Lilly, UCB, Janssen, Biogen, GE, Intel, IBM, SoftwareAG, Michael J Fox Foundation, Vibrent (a major subcontractor to the US Precision Medicine Initiative) and FitBit.
Research Interests:
- Bioinformatics
- Biomarkers
- Modeling
- Next generation sequencing
- Machine Learning
- Data Integration
- Networks
Teaching:
- Bioinformatics, Interpretation and Data Quality in Genome Analysis
- Research Project
- Fundamental Neuroscience
Expertise and Public Engagement:
- Population & Health Services Research working group, informing the Strategy Steering Group. Responsible for providing a narrative for inclusion in the final DoH 10-year strategy document. Department of Health (2016)
- Joint leadership for the GeL EHR Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership (GeCIP) & Clinical Data and Life Course working group, Genomics England (2016-present)
- Member - aims to harness 1% of NHS IT funding for an open platform in healthcare to meet the needs of 21st Century Healthcare (https://goo.gl/jChs8x), 1% Open Digital Platform Challenge Fund Push (2016-present)
- BioResource Sequencing and Informatics Committee Member, NIHR (2012-present)
- Member of the University College London Hospital (UCLH) Research Systems Strategy Group (2016-present)
- Member of the King’s Health Partner (KHP) Informatics Strategy group (2016-present)
Research

ADHD Remote Technology (ART)
The ADHD Remote Technology (ART) research programme focuses on the development and application of a novel remote measurement technology system for ADHD
Status not set
ART-CARMA - The ADHD Remote Technology study of cardiometabolic risk factors and medication adherence
ART-CARMA, the ADHD Remote Technology study of cardiometabolic risk factors and medication adherence, is a large remote monitoring project on adults with ADHD
Project status: Ongoing

ART-pilot
The ADHD Remote Technology pilot feasibility study (ART-pilot) involves the initial development stages of the new remote measurement technology system for ADHD
Project status: Ongoing

Ageing Research at King's (ARK)
Cross faculty consortium addressing ageing and healthy longevity.
Status not setNews
£2.5m funding to study transition to adulthood for individuals with ADHD
The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded £2.5 million funding to principal investigator, Professor Jonna Kuntsi, and team to use remote technology to...

IoPPN to collaborate on new MRC funded project to investigate ADHD among women
The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded funding to co-investigators Professor Jonna Kuntsi and Professor Richard Dobson at the Institute of Psychiatry,...

Forecasting Future Medical Events: CogStack Foresight
Read about King's work on forecasting future medical events using CogStack Foresight, as featured in the Bringing the Human to the Artificial exhibition.

CogStack wins an Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award
Cogstack is an information retrieval, extraction and natural language processing platform developed by researchers at the NIHR Maudsley BRC and King’s College...

ART-CARMA Clinical Study part of 6m Euro global programme
The EU funded project will utilise new wearable technology and smartphone apps to obtain real time data from adults with ADHD

'Trending' doctors' notes could help hospitals predict COVID-19 surges
Data mining technology developed by researchers at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre could help hospitals plan for surges in COVID-19 cases, based...

NEWS2 evaluated for prediction of severe COVID-19 outcome in large international study
In the first systematic large-scale evaluation of the UK National Early Warning Risk Score (NEWS) 2 as a scoring system for predicting severe COVID-19...

Can wearables like Fitbit devices be used to help detect COVID-19?
The COVID-Collab research team at King’s College London have launched a free mobile app which will allow scientists to investigate the use of wearable devices...

Using AI and electronic health records to determine the impact of blood pressure medication on COVID-19 severity
Natural language processing tool finds blood pressure medications do not increase COVID-19 severity.

BAME COVID-19 patients 10 years younger than white counterparts, study finds
The average age of a BAME patient hospitalised with COVID-19 is ten years younger than a white patient, a new study has found.

Research

ADHD Remote Technology (ART)
The ADHD Remote Technology (ART) research programme focuses on the development and application of a novel remote measurement technology system for ADHD
Status not set
ART-CARMA - The ADHD Remote Technology study of cardiometabolic risk factors and medication adherence
ART-CARMA, the ADHD Remote Technology study of cardiometabolic risk factors and medication adherence, is a large remote monitoring project on adults with ADHD
Project status: Ongoing

ART-pilot
The ADHD Remote Technology pilot feasibility study (ART-pilot) involves the initial development stages of the new remote measurement technology system for ADHD
Project status: Ongoing

Ageing Research at King's (ARK)
Cross faculty consortium addressing ageing and healthy longevity.
Status not setNews
£2.5m funding to study transition to adulthood for individuals with ADHD
The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded £2.5 million funding to principal investigator, Professor Jonna Kuntsi, and team to use remote technology to...

IoPPN to collaborate on new MRC funded project to investigate ADHD among women
The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded funding to co-investigators Professor Jonna Kuntsi and Professor Richard Dobson at the Institute of Psychiatry,...

Forecasting Future Medical Events: CogStack Foresight
Read about King's work on forecasting future medical events using CogStack Foresight, as featured in the Bringing the Human to the Artificial exhibition.

CogStack wins an Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award
Cogstack is an information retrieval, extraction and natural language processing platform developed by researchers at the NIHR Maudsley BRC and King’s College...

ART-CARMA Clinical Study part of 6m Euro global programme
The EU funded project will utilise new wearable technology and smartphone apps to obtain real time data from adults with ADHD

'Trending' doctors' notes could help hospitals predict COVID-19 surges
Data mining technology developed by researchers at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre could help hospitals plan for surges in COVID-19 cases, based...

NEWS2 evaluated for prediction of severe COVID-19 outcome in large international study
In the first systematic large-scale evaluation of the UK National Early Warning Risk Score (NEWS) 2 as a scoring system for predicting severe COVID-19...

Can wearables like Fitbit devices be used to help detect COVID-19?
The COVID-Collab research team at King’s College London have launched a free mobile app which will allow scientists to investigate the use of wearable devices...

Using AI and electronic health records to determine the impact of blood pressure medication on COVID-19 severity
Natural language processing tool finds blood pressure medications do not increase COVID-19 severity.

BAME COVID-19 patients 10 years younger than white counterparts, study finds
The average age of a BAME patient hospitalised with COVID-19 is ten years younger than a white patient, a new study has found.
