Professor Darrel Francis is Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He is internationally recognized for applying advanced quantitative techniques derived from mathematics, engineering and statistics to solve complex clinical problems in cardiology. Educated at the University of Cambridge, he trained as a junior doctor in Oxford and has developed a strong research focus on quantitative cardiac physiology, cardiopulmonary interaction and clinical trial methodology.</br>
Professor Francis leads cutting-edge research to improve the precision of cardiac testing and treatment. His work emphasises personalised medicine through sophisticated data analysis and aims to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. He has authored numerous high-impact publications on topics including cardiac imaging, arrhythmias, heart failure, coronary disease, statistics and clinical trial design. He has also mentored several clinical fellows early in their careers who have gone on to become leading investigators in their field.
Imperial College Profile: Imperial College London – Darrel Francis
Full list of publications: Imperial College Publications
My specialism in cardiology research is applying technology to common clinical problems. FFCH has been pivotal in making my research possible through funding the pioneering stages at which it is difficult to persuade a generally sceptical peer review board that the new technology could work. FFCH excels in providing modest support at this key time so that proof of concept can be obtained which leads to major external funding. For example,
Originally, the only way to fine tune settings of a pacemaker was to use echo scans and try to judge when the timings were optimal. We pioneered a new approach using automated alternations between pairs of settings, and a mathematical framework, that identified optimal pacemaker settings in a consistent and trustworthy manner. This has led to major external funding from the British Heart Foundation and has set off the careers of several clinical academics including Professor Zachary Whinnett, Dr Daniel Keene and Dr Ahran Arnold.
Traditional scans of the heart are measured manually in a painstaking and error prone process. FFCH funded our pioneering work over a decade ago to develop reliable automatic methods which led on to a €1 million European Research Council grant and more recently a £1.5 million British Hert Foundation Programme Grant which is now the basis of the next generation of clinical academics including Dr Matthew Shun-Shin and Dr James Howard who are taking this forward into the Artificial Intelligence arena.
