JOHN DEANFIELD CBE

Professor of Cardiology, University College London

Deanfield’s career has focused on the management of heart disease across the lifetime of an individual. He completed his clinical training at the Middlesex Hospital London. He then carried out his postgraduate training at Great Ormond Street Hospital in paediatric cardiology and at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School Hammersmith Hospital, London, in adult cardiology, which allowed him to understand cardiovascular disease in its different stages and progression.

Deanfield was appointed a Consultant Cardiologist at GOSH in 1984. A key contributor to the new speciality of Adult Congenital Heart Disease, he chaired the National and International Practice Guidelines, including the European Society of Cardiology Task Force for Grown-Up Congenital Heart Disease (GUCH) (2003). At The National Heart Hospital, he developed one of the largest programmes for Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD/GUCH) in the world, which was transferred to create a new unit at the new Barts Heart Centre in 2015. He chaired the Standards Committee for Adults in the UK National ‘Safe and Sustainable’ Review of Congenital Heart Disease services in 2014 and advised on subsequent implementation.

As Director of NICOR since 2011, Deanfield oversees one of the largest longitudinal sets of cardiovascular electronic health records in the world, providing UK-wide data for NHS Quality Improvement, research and public engagement. He has actively worked towards improvements to cardiology, working on prevention, clinical care and the evaluation of outcomes.

He has published more than 450 research articles, ranging across the consequences of congenital heart disease to the early onset of acquired cardiovascular disease in adults. Deanfield developed a non-invasive technique to study the factors responsible for early arterial disease and its response to treatment. In 2014, he chaired the JBS3 Cardiovascular Prevention Guidelines, introducing the concept of ‘investing in your arteries’ to communicate with patients. This in turn led to the development in 2018 of the Heart Age Calculator to extend this messaging to the general public, in collaboration with PHE and NHS England. Deanfield co-chairs the Expert Scientific and Clinical Advisory Panel (ESCAP) for the Health Check Programme in PHE as well as the Academic Group on Healthy Ageing in PHE.