About
Professor John Williams holds a chair in health services research in Swansea University Medical School and is an honorary consultant gastroenterologist with Swansea Bay University Health Board. He trained in medicine at Cambridge Univeristy and St Thomas' Hospital in London, qualifying in 1970.
He served as a medical officer in the Royal Navy until 1988 when he was appointed to Swansea University as the founding director of the School of Postgraduate Studies in Medical and Healthcare, the precursor of the Medical School. He pioneered the development of health services in informatics research, leading to the recognition of Swansea as a founding Centre of Excellence in the Farr Institute.
From 2002 - 7 he was Director of the Wales Office of Research and Development, a post in which he created the Clinical Research Collaboration Cymru, and the Health Information Research Unit in Swansea. As a clinical and health services researcher he has led major trials of treatment and service delivery, developed patient focused approaches to the measurement of quality of life and outcome, and used routinely collected data for large scale population studies.
As Director of the Health Informatics Unit at the Royal College of Physicians from 2002-19 he led the development of national standards to improve the structure and content of patient records and communications. These standards are now embodied in national policy and will be fundamental to the success and safety of a paperless NHS, and improvements in the quality of rountinely recorded clinical data.