Professor Krish Nirantharakumar MBBS MPH MFPH MRCP(UK) MD

• MD University of Birmingham, UK 2013
• Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in Public Health Medicine, West Midlands Deanery, UK 2012
• MFPH Faculty of Public Health, UK 2010
• PGDip. (Epidemiology) University of London, UK 2009
• MPH University of Birmingham, UK 2008
• MRCP (UK) Royal College of Physicians, UK 2007
• MBBS University of Colombo, Sri Lanka 2002

Krish completed his medical degree in 2002 and trained in hospital medicine in a number of hospitals in UK. He was elected through exams as a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in 2007. Later he specialised in Public Health Medicine (2007 – 2012) completing a Masters in Public Health (MPH), Membership exams of the Faculty of Public Health (MFPH) and the certificate for completion of specialist training (CCT) in Public Health Medicine. He obtained his doctoral research degree (MD) studying the potential role of health informatics tools in improving the care of hospitalised patients with diabetes.

In March 2012 Krish was awarded a 3 year clinical research fellowship by the West Midlands Deanery. However in 2013 to gain experience in working in a cross disciplinary environment with computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers he joined the Institute of Digital Healthcare (IDH) at University of Warwick as a senior research fellow for one year and then returned to University of Birmingham to take on a Senior Clinical Lecturer post. In 2018 in recognition of his contribution to Real World Evidence (RWE) research and co-innovation of the DExtER tool for Automated Clinical Epidemiology Studies (ACES) he was awarded a prestigious MRC fellowship (UKRI Innovation Clinical Fellow). He was promoted to Professor of Health Data Science and Public Health in recognition of his international reputation for innovative methodology development for automated epidemiology studies and his clinical /public health research into epidemiology of diabetes/endocrinology, multimorbidity and women’s health.

Krish has vast experience in teaching and has led the MPH (Programme Lead) and post graduate taught courses (Director for PGT) at the Department of Applied Health Sciences. He was awarded the prestigious vice chancellor's outstanding teaching award in 2016. 

Krish has honorary consultant in Public Health Medicine appointments with Public health England and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. He is the founder of the West Midlands Health Informatics Network (2013-2018) and Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of the DExtER Software start-up (2023- to date).

• Public Health MPH/PG Diploma/PG Certificate

• Medicine and Surgery MBChB

• MSc in Health Data Science

• MSc in Health Research methods

Krish has supervised ten doctoral students (9 PhDs and 1 MD) to completion, six of them as primary supervisor. He currently supervises eight students as primary supervisor.

Krish is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

• The role of informatics and digital technology in the management of diabetes and multiple morbidities.
• Epidemiology of endocrinological disorders
• Technologies for learning health systems (Automated Clinical Epidemiology, Computer Executable Guidelines and Electronic Health Record development)

If you are interested in studying any of these subject areas please contact Krish directly, or 
for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email mds-gradschool@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Methodology theme:

• Developing, implementing and evaluating digital technologies for learning health systems (Automated Clinical Epidemiology Studies (ACES), Informatics Consult, Data/Electronic Health Record Driven Clinical Trials and Computable Clinical Guidelines): Innovative methodological approach to develop technologies that enable efficient research, quality improvement and decision making in health care has been the main focus of Krish’s current research and has led to the University of Birmingham gaining an international reputation for being one of the very few universities to have successfully researched and knowledge-engineered epidemiological study designs into computer executable formats. Krish was the first to implement such a platform (DExtER tool) in the United Kingdom and publish the methods in the European Journal of Epidemiology. The DExtER tool is now being trialled as a data driven clinical trials platform (RADIANT Trial). The tool is also part of developing AI based technologies for managing people living with multiple long term conditions (OPTIMAL project £2.5million). Krish is the medical director for OpenClinical, a social enterprise where he works with the technology lead (Dr Matthew South) to develop open-source tools for developing computable guidelines using the Proforma technology developed by Late Professor John Fox. Through funding from Midland Patient Safety Centre, BRC Data, Digital and Diagnostics theme and NHS organisations (Shrewsbury Maternity HospitaI and University Hospitals Birmingham), implementation of both DExtER and OpenClinical Platform as a learning health system within NHS organisation is currently being undertaken.
• Real World Evidence Research (THIN-KING research group): Krish has established a research group to work with clinicians across the Midlands to provide rapid evidence using electronic medical record data. These research groups have contributed to over 50 publications, many in high impact general medical and specialty journals.

 Clinical and Public Health Themes:

• Epidemiology of diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic disorders: Krish’s clinical research interest is focussed on diabetes and endocrinology. He leads the clinical epidemiology group at the centre for endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism (CEDAM). He has used electronic medical record, cohort, and clinical trials data to contribute to the understanding of the determinants, prognosis and therapeutic options for diabetes and endocrine disorders.
• Women’s Health Research:  Focus include: 1) multiple long-term conditions in pregnancy (MuM-PreDiCT); 2) health conditions specific (e.g. polycystic ovarian syndrome) or dominant in women (e.g migraine, idiopathic intracranial hypertension) and their effect on pregnancy and long-term health conditions; and 3) the effect of domestic violence on health outcomes.
• Multimorbidity Research: Krish leads two national consortiums in multimorbidity research with a grant income over £5 million. One as principal investigator (MuMPreDiCT as above) and the other as joint principal investigator (OPTIMAL: optimising therapies and tackling trajectories in people living with multiple long term conditions using AI methods).

• Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine: Diabetes Department, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. 2014 onwards
• Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine: Public Health England. 2013 onwards
• Medical Director: OpenClinical Community Interest Company, UK: 2020 onwards
• Trustee of the charity: Network for Improving Care Services and Training (NICST): 2020 onwards
• Panel Member: Medical Research Council, Methodology panel: 2020 onwards
• Founder and Chief Scientific Officer: DEXTER Software Limited: 2023 onwards
• Committee member: Acute care, Clinical Scientific Group (CSG), Diabetes UK: March 2017 to date
• Founder and member: West Midlands Health Informatics Network (WIN): 2013-2017
• Associate clinical fellow: Health Informatics Unit, Royal College of Physicians, UK: 2014-2019
• Expert topic member: NICE guidelines update committee for diabetes prevention in high risk patients: 2016-2017
• Expert topic member: NICE guidelines update committee for SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP1 agonists in diabetes management: 2017