Dr Josip Car

Hello and welcome!

Here you’ll be able to learn a little bit about me from an academic point of view. Happy reading!

I am an executive physician-scientist combining the roles of a Director of Global eHealth Unit at Imperial College, Director of Public Health and Primary Care at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and a practicing general practitioner. I serve in a range of other roles including as a research and primary care editorial adviser to the British Medical Journal, Board Member of Journal of Global Health; an Editor of the Cochrane Collaboration, a Clinical co-director of The London (North West) NIHR Comprehensive Local Research Network, a lead clinical director for the new Imperial GP Specialty Training and a member of the core group for the NW London CLAHRC. In these roles I blend research, teaching, management and clinical work. Below I present each of them in a little more detail.

Research

For me research could be summarized in three words: think, play, do. It is about creating new ideas, thinking about new options and playing with them to see if they are practical, beneficial and economical, and then doing: making the research real. Each of these steps - think, play, do - endures rigorous scientific analysis.

My research spans from health services research to policy work. I’m currently leading or partner in projects on:

• Evidence synthesis in several areas including global health and health management
• Quality and safety improvement in management of common clinical problems in primary care such as diabetes
• eHealth & mHealth - exploring different information and communication technologies use for improving patient and population health. For more information about the work of my team see Global eHealth Unit's website.

Global eHealth Unit’s mission is to develop models of care that are personalized; integrate and synergize healthcare delivery by deploying information technologies to their full potential; and provide continuously improving high quality care to all while empowering individuals and populations. We want to achieve this in both-international resource-limited settings and domestic resource-rich settings.

Management in healthcare

My work as the Director of Public Health and Primary Care at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust focuses on developing new integrated models of healthcare delivery, leading the trust on becoming a truly health promoting hospital, strengthening collaboration between primary and secondary care and overseeing our primary care services amongst many priorities.

There is a synergy between my research and management work. I am passionate about evidence based medicine and my role as a director gives me an opportunity to implement latest clinically innovative and cost-effective research evidence into patient care.

Teaching and supervision

I like to teach. Hardly anything can be so challenging as being a good teacher. Why? Because “setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.” (Albert Einstein)

Themes on which I teach include: research methodology, in particular systematic and Cochrane review methodology, evidence based health care as a (not so) new paradigm and clinical topics.

I supervise PhD and Masters in Public Health students. If you are interested in doing a PhD or research internship in Global eHealth Unit you are very welcome to get in touch.

Clinical work

I greatly enjoy my clinical work with patients. It’s fantastic to be able to combine clinical work with my other roles - they enrich and inform each other.

Free time activities

OK, I’ll share a little bit of personal information too. I have never been quite able to decide whether I more like mountains or sea. So I tend to go to both. Below is a photo of one of my favourite islands in the Adriatic (Do you recognise it?).