Rate My Professor Jonathan Hill

Professor Jonathan C. Hill is Professor in Physiotherapy and Director of Research for the School of Allied Health Professions at Keele University’s School of Medicine. He earned his BSc in Physiotherapy in 1994 and an MSc in 1995 from Manchester Royal Infirmary, followed by a PhD from Keele University in 2007. His doctoral research, supervised by Elaine Hay and Kate Dunn, focused on developing and validating the STarT Back Tool through a feasibility and pilot trial for low back pain risk stratification and matched treatments. Prior to academia, Hill practiced clinically as a physiotherapist for four years in Stoke-on-Trent (UK), Vellore (India), Perth (Australia), and Derby (UK). He joined Keele University in 1999 as a research assistant in the Primary Care Centre under Professor Krysia Dziedzic and progressed to Lecturer in Physiotherapy after securing a five-year postdoctoral fellowship from Arthritis Research UK.

Hill’s research specializes in improving the assessment and management of musculoskeletal (MSK) pain in primary care, with emphasis on risk stratification tools such as STarT Back and STarT MSK, large multi-centre clinical trials, measurement of MSK disorders, and digital health solutions including clinical decision support systems. He led the landmark STarT Back Trial, published in The Lancet in 2011, which demonstrated the clinical and cost-effectiveness of stratified primary care for low back pain compared to current best practice, influencing global policy and practice including NICE low back pain guidelines (2016), UK Back and Osteoarthritis pain (BOA) pathway (2017), Danish Health Authority guidelines (2017), and US Bree Collaborative (2013). Key innovations include co-developing the Musculoskeletal Health Questionnaire (MSK-HQ, 2016), a validated patient-reported outcome measure licensed by over 500 NHS Trusts; leading the EU Horizon 2020-funded Back-UP project (£4.58 million) to develop cloud-based decision support tools across nine countries; and principal investigator roles in trials such as SupportBack2 (£1.3 million, 2018), SUPPORTPRIM (£1.2 million, 2021), OPTIMSE, and MSK Pathways. He has supervised six PhD students (four completed), mentored early career researchers producing 23 papers, taught research methods modules, prognosis short courses, and pain management for medical students and physiotherapists, collaborated internationally, and authored over 100 publications. Among his most cited works are “Comparison of stratified primary care management for low back pain with current best practice (STarT Back): a randomised controlled trial” (The Lancet, 2011) and “A primary care back pain screening tool: identifying patient subgroups for initial treatment” (Arthritis Care & Research, 2008).