Sir Aziz Sheikh
Head of Department and Nuffield Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at University of Oxford
Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh was appointed to succeed Professor Richard Hobbs CBE as Nuffield Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences and Head of Department, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, the University of Oxford in August 2024.
Aziz has remained in close collaboration with the Usher Institute at The University of Edinburgh, where he was previously based. He continues to work on the EAVE surveillance platform, which has developed one of the most comprehensive national-scale health data resources in the world.
Developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EAVE brings together linked GP, vaccination, testing, viral sequencing, hospitalisation, prescribing, and mortality data into a near real-time national longitudinal cohort, which covers 99% of the Scottish population. This surveillance platform has allowed the EAVE II team to provide crucial answers to urgent health policy, public health and clinical questions throughout the pandemic. During his time at The University of Edinburgh Aziz served as an adviser to a number of Scottish, UK and international government bodies and to inter-governmental organisations, including the World Bank and World Health Organization.
He is a Fellow of 9 learned societies, including the Academy of Medical Sciences, the American College of Medical Informatics and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He is an editorial board member of Health Informatics Journal, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, The Lancet Regional Health Europe, Medical Care and PLoS Medicine, and is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Quality in Health Care.
Aziz was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for ‘Services to Medicine and Health Care’ in 2014, and received a knighthood for ‘Services to Covid-19 research and policy’ in 2022.