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Gari D. Clifford
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I am part of the faculty at the University of Oxford in the Department of Engineering Science where I am a University Lecturer and Fellow of Kellogg College. I run the Intelligent Patient Monitoring Group at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME). I am also the Associate Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Healthcare Innovation, a major UK government (RCUK)-funded centre for teaching translational biomedical engineering. On our programme students gain first-hand experience of how technologies they develop can have a clinical impact through hospital internships. They develop translational research skills to accelerate clinical uptake of technologies and take inventions through the first steps of commercialisation. Students also learn how to design clinical trials, about innovation/entrepreneurship, and a spectrum of biomedical skills including machine learning, signal processing and physiological modelling. The Ph.D. is focused in information-driven healthcare, personalized modelling in healthcare, or cancer therapeutics and delivery.
My own research (and teaching) interests lie in Intelligent Patient Monitoring and Signal Processing/Data Fusion. My main application areas in health are Critical Care, Sleep & Resource-Constrained Environments (such as in developing countries). I am currently building a research group at Oxford at the IBME with the following four broad themes:
* Adverse event prediction it the ICU.
* Neuro-cardiopulmonary interactions (particularly in neonates).
* Fetal monitoring for maternal and pre-/ante-natal care.
* AI4D - Intelligent patient monitoring in resource constrained environments using cellular devices and networks.
Until recently I was a Principal Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Computational Physiology at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences where I was the engineering manager of a R01 NIH-funded research program, "Integrating Data, Models, and Reasoning in Critical Care", and a part-time contributor to the well-known Physionet Research Resource. I studied Physics and Electronics for my undergraduate degree, I have a Masters in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Southampton University and a Ph.D. in Neural Networks and Biomedical Engineering from Oxford University. I have taught (and still do) at Oxford, MIT and Harvard, and I am currently an Instructor in Biomedical Engineering at MIT. I am a Senior Member of the IEEE and have worked in industry on the design and production of several CE- and FDA-approved medical devices. I am a Scientific Advisor for various hardware and software companies including E-Trolz, who manufacture hardware for recording ECG data. We are attempting to integrate open-source data standards and tools onto their hardware.
Apart from my day job at Oxford's IBME and CDT,
I am a member of SAMP,
the Systems Analysis, Modelling and Prediction Group in
the Dept. of Engineering Science, Oxford University.
I am also a fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford.
I continue to hold affiliate research positions at MIT and Harvard.
My research interests include multidimensional biomedical signal
processing, noise analysis, missing data, ECG and cardiovascular
modeling and supervised and unsupervised learning from massive temporal
biomedical databases. A list of projects I am currently working on, or
have worked on, can be found here and a list of collaborators
can be found
here.
In 2006 I co-wrote a book entitled
Advanced Methods for ECG Analysis,
which is co-edited by Francisco Azuaje and
Patrick McSharry, and is published
by Artech House.
Sample chapters from this book can be found
here.
A second volume of this book is now in preparation.
I have a strong interest in sustainable technology for medical diagnostics, education and economic development, both for developing countries and the developed world. I am part of the NextBillion network at MIT, and have taught on a connected course on ICT4D (Information Communication Technologies for Development). This course is offered through the Media Lab at MIT. I am also a member of the Center for Developmental Communications in the Media Lab. Through this course, Dr Leo Celi and I founded an open-source mobile healthcare platform for rapid and accurate data transmission in resource-constrained environments, now known as Sana (formerly Moca or MocaMobile). Our vision is to provide an open-source customizable medical data exchange platform which, amongst other things, allows the collection of accurate labelled medical data. Not only does this facilitate low-cost diagnostics and treatments, it also allows us to develop intelligent agents to perform automated quality control and decision support. The hope is that the use of artifical intelligence on personal devices, trained on an ever expanding ark of patient- and disease-specific medical data, will expand distributed diagnostic care from millions of healthcare workers to billions of individuals. In this way we may provide low-cost personalized medicine which patients manage themselves.
I also believe that the open publication and detailed documentation of
research is as vital to progress as the development of the technology
iteself. This includes both the code and data used in the publication.
I am therefore a strong supporter of
PhysioNet
and am on the
editorial
board of
BioMedical Engineering
Online.
BioMedical Engineering OnLine is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal
that is dedicated to publishing research in all areas of biomedical engineering.
BMEO is free to download, and free to publish in (if
your institution subscribes,
paying a small fee),
although discounts are available and charges
paying a can be waived.
BMEO and is one of a
range of online journals
published by
BioMed Central.
Note that all BioMed Central journals allow the authors to retain their
copyright. The journals' impact
factors
and the citations are tracked by
ISI ,
Scopus
and
Google Scholar .
An incomplete list of other relevant journals, with scope, immediacy factors, impact factors and links can
be found here .
Please feel free to submit any other to this that you think might be useful.
I also contribute to many other journals as a reviewer or advisor.
I am currently on the International Advisory Board of the Institute of Physics' Journal
Physiological Measurement
as well as BioMedical Engineering Online
and the
Journal of Biological Systems.
As a member of the International Advisory Board I assist the development and enhance the
quality of the journal in the areas in which I have expertise and act as an ambassador for
the journal, to encourage the submission of good papers from inernational colleagues and contacts,
and to assist in the promotion of the journal at academic meetings. IAB members also act as
expert adjudicators in difficult cases where the referees are not in agreement.
Joining my research group
When I have funded doctoral and post-doctoral positions available, I will post the information here. If you are considering working with me, please read my ethics page.We are currently recruiting for DPhil (PhD) students at the Center for Doctoral Training (CDT) for October 2010. See here and here for more information. The deadlines for applications are 20 November 2009 (first round), 22 January 2010 (second round), and 12 March 2010 (third round). This schedule will be repeated (approxiamtely) each year for the next four years. Before submitting a full application for a studentship on the programme, all candidates are required to upload a copy of their most recent CV at the main CDT URL.
If advised to submit an application, all applicants are required to follow the University guidelines on the admissions process.
Please apply online through the University's Graduate Admissions Office, using programme code 002465, DPhil in Healthcare Innovation, in your application, and consider the associated colleges (Linacre, Magdalen, St Catherine's, St Cross, Trinity, St Hilda's, Jesus, Keble, St Anne's, Lady Margaret Hall, Wadham, Wolfson and Kellogg Colleges) for your college choices.
For enquiries please refer to the main CDT URL. No direct email or telephone enquiries please.
Please do read the course materials and apply directly. Please do not send you application to me, I will answer through the enquiry form. (Why the form? Well first it saves me asking everyone the same 20 questions via email, over and over, and secondly, it helps us to keep track of the demographics of the applicants and interested students. Please note that I receive an enormous number of emails, so may not find time to answer all enquiries.News
Sana (formerly MocaMobile) update
Name ChangeMocaMobile, has now been renamed Sana, because we neglected to trademark the name and company who believes they have a similar name in somewhat related area have bombarded our poor engineers with legal letters.
Winning!
On the plus side, Sana was one of the winners of the Vodafone Wireless Innovation Challenge that were announced yesterday at the Global Philanthropy Forum. Third prize in the the Wireless Innovation Project nets us $100k. Sana also will receive the mHealth Award Alliance with benefits totaling $50,000.
March 30th 2010: Moca wins 2010 Davis Projects for Peace Fellowship .
Press
July 2nd 2009: "A phone is not just a phone: Student projects explore innovative cellphone uses in developing world" David L. Chandler, MIT News Office.
October 14, 2009, Boston Globe: Moca was featured on the front page of the Business section of the Boston Globe in an article about cell phone applications that are changing the world.
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Hall-Clifford