Benjamin Bridgewater, PhD, FRCS (CTh)

Ben Bridgewater is the CEO at Health Innovation Manchester

He was formally a consultant cardiac surgeon at the University Hospital of South Manchester and Honorary Professor at Manchester Academic Health Science Centre. He led the programme to collect, analyse and publish data on cardiac surgical outcomes in the UK and ran an active research programme  which developed methodologies for analysis and applied the data to hypothesis testing. In March 2013, Ben was appointed as the Director of Outcomes Publication at the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership, to deliver the publication of clinical outcomes for 12 surgical specialties and interventional cardiology on behalf of NHS England. He was nominated by the HSJ as one of the top 50 innovators in health in the UK in 2013 & 2014. In 2016 Ben left the NHS to join CSC (now DXC.technology) as their Director of Healthcare Strategy in UKI and the Netherlands.

Ben trained in medicine at St Mary’s, Paddington, and decided at an early stage to pursue a career in cardiac surgery. He undertook a PhD at the Brompton Hospital whilst an SHO  focussing on experimental studies and mathematical modelling of inert gas exchange kinetics. After returning to clinical practice he applied these experiences to collecting and analysing cardiac surgical outcomes data, setting up the Northwest Quality Improvement programme in Cardiac Interventions in 1998 (this won the Health Services Journal award for best quality improvement programme in 2003), and then taking over responsibility for the national programme from Sir Bruce Keogh in 2005. The Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons in GB and Ireland subsequently won the BMJ award for best quality improvement programme in 2009 for this work, which has been associated with a greater than 50% reduction in risk adjusted operative mortality over recent years.

Ben was also seconded on a part time basis to UCL where he was a clinical lead at the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR), an organisation established to develop and optimise the potential of the cardiac national clinical audit programme.

Ben developed increasing links with Prof Iain Buchan and the team at the Northwest Institute for Bio-Health Informatics where he developed better models for data feedback to drive quality improvement, refining methods of risk analysis and reporting, and establishing a national network of researchers to add value to cardiac surgical national audit data.

As part of Ben’s interest in the use of clinical outcomes data, he become increasingly interested in the role of this type of information for regulatory purposes and particularly how focus on quality of care though outcomes can modify doctors attitudes to medical professionalism.

In 2013 Ben took a role for the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) as Director of Outcomes Publication to support the wider publication of outcomes across surgery and interventional cardiology in response to the NHS England anouncement in 'Everyone Counts'.

In 2016 Ben left the NHS to pursue his interests in using data and digital tranformation to improve outcomes for patients and the health economy through CSC (now DXC.technology) initially as their Director of Healthcare Strategy in UKI and the Netherlands and laterlally as the Director of the Healthcare and Lifesciences Global Build Advisory Group

1. Supervised medical student special study modules in cardiac surgery whilst in the NHS
2. Lectured widely on quality improvement, collecting and analysing clinical outomes data and the use of these data for professional recertification
3. Post graduate teaching and training on mitral valve repair and modern medical professionalism.
 

Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Member of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in GB and Ireland

FRCS (CTh) 1997
PhD (London) 1994
MB BS (London) 1986
 

Ben was a non executive director of Picker Institute Europe 2013-2015