David Ford is Professor of Health Informatics and leads the Health Informatics Group at College of Medicine in Swansea University, Wales, UK. David’s interest is in the collection and use of data to support research, and the development of approaches and platforms that can deal with the exciting new opportunities the explosion of digital data now offers the research world.
David is Director of the Administrative Data Research Centre (ADRC) Wales, a £13 million investment by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of its Big Data initiative. He is also Deputy Director of the Wales and Northern Ireland substantive site of Health Data Research UK (HDRUK), which has followed on from the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research.
David is also Director of the SAIL DataBank, an internationally acclaimed data linkage system, bringing together data from the public services across Wales and UK about the people of Wales, to be anonymised, linked and then safely reused for research, innovation and enquiry. He also leads on the strategic develop of his group’s innovative Secure e-Research Platform (UKSeRP), which was initially funded by the MRC and now provides robust, ISO27001 assured data curation and sharing facilities for a wide variety of groups and organisations across the UK and internationally.
David is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA) and past Chairman and a current Director of MediWales, a membership organisation representing the medical technology sector of Wales. David is a member of numerous committees and national bodies relating to health informatics and health-related research. He has received research grants and consultancy contracts valuing over £55m over recent years.
