Rate My Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox

Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox is the inaugural Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Predictive Medicine in the Wolfson Institute of Population Health at Queen Mary University of London, appointed in 2025. She is also Honorary Consultant in Public Health at Barts NHS Trust. Previously, she held the position of Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and General Practice at the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and was Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, where in 2003 she founded and directed QResearch, the world's largest database of anonymised primary care health records encompassing over 40 million patients, developed in collaboration with EMIS Health. Her research specializations encompass clinical epidemiology, predictive medicine, primary care, drug safety, cancer detection, and health inequalities, with expertise in designing and analysing large-scale electronic health record databases.

Hippisley-Cox has pioneered numerous first-of-their-kind clinical risk prediction algorithms implemented at scale across the NHS, including QRISK for cardiovascular disease risk (2007), QRISK2 (2008), QRISK3 (2017), QFractureScores for osteoporotic fractures (2009), QDScore for type 2 diabetes (2009), and QCOVID for COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality risk (2020), which expanded the shielded patient list and prioritised 1.5 million high-risk individuals for vaccination. These tools, alongside others on cancer risks and drug effects, have saved thousands of premature deaths from cardiovascular disease. She has undertaken national leadership roles, chairing the Risk Stratification Subgroup of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), serving on Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) subgroups, the Chief Medical Officer's screening advisory group, NHS Health Check Expert Panel, National Ethics and Confidentiality Committee, and as a founder member of the Confidentiality Advisory Group. Her honours include the Royal College of General Practitioners John Fry Award (2009), Florence Nightingale Award from the Royal Statistical Society (2021), HSJ Best Use of Technology Award, John Perry Award for NHS IT contributions (2013 and 2021), Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and NIHR Senior Investigator status.