Neil MacKnight

Senior Researcher (Health)

Neil is a TWRI senior research associate in Health, with over 23 years in an NHS clinical and analytical background. He has wide experience of health data, public health analysis, police road traffic accident data and population data. Amongst his areas of interest are hospital spell based analysis, clinical audit, community health profiles, hospital catchment areas, service improvement and GIS in healthcare.

After qualifying as a Clinical Physiologist, he specialised in Audiology at Gateshead Hospitals. He joined the University of Newcastle as a Research Associate, where he managed the Public Health Injury Surveillance System for Children (PHISSCh) research project.

Following a short spell in the private sector working with PCT commissioning systems, Neil spent 5 years with the North East Public Health Observatory (NEPHO) as a Senior Information Manager. There he established the regional Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) analytical service and chaired the national HES Technical Group. He was also responsible for supporting NHS Clinical Networks and Local Authority Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

As a programme manager with NHS Lothian, Neil was responsible for the Data and Information Sharing Programme across the NHS, four Local Authorities, voluntary sector, Police and Scottish Government. This programme successfully introduced electronic Child Protection alerts and electronic Inter-Agency Referral Discussion (eIRD) for sharing information on vulnerable children.

More recently, Neil has been involved in a number of national projects including further work with HES and Payment by Results, managing National Clinical Audits.

Neil holds an MSc in Health Information Management from the University of Sunderland and Practitioner qualifications in Prince 2 and Managing Successful Programmes.