Professor Peter Diggle has been appointed by Health Data Research UK as Director of Training.

HDR UK is the national institute for data science in healthcare which aims to address the most pressing health research challenges facing the public.

Professor Diggle is a Distinguished University Professor of Statistics in CHICAS, a research and training group within the Lancaster Medical School that operates at the intersection of biostatistics, epidemiology and health informatics. He holds adjunct positions at Johns Hopkins, Yale and Columbia Universities, and was president of the Royal Statistical Society between July 2014 and December 2016.

He will be joined by Professor Georgina Moulton of Manchester University and Dr Gabriella Rustici from the University of Cambridge as Associate Directors.

Professor Andrew Morris, Director of HDR UK, said: “The UK has a rich heritage of using health data for research, innovation and to inform care which has led to new insights that have improved the quality of health and social care services and saved lives.

“I am delighted to welcome Peter, Georgina and Gabriella to the team to lead on this vital area of our work. They are a high energy team that brings complementary expertise to help shape our strategy for training across the UK.”

Combining their considerable expertise and passion for training, the trio will embrace novel learning approaches to support researchers from a wide range of disciplines involved in health data science.

By working with, and beyond, the 23 universities and research institutions that comprise the six substantive Health Data Research UK sites, the team will build on existing best practice and create a programme to transform the careers of future leaders in this area on a national scale. This will include working closely with strategic partners including, for example, the National Institute for Health Research.