Overview

We are deeply saddened by the death of our much-loved and valued colleague, Professor Ken Stein, who has been involved with the Medical School for more than 20 years.  He established Health Technology Assessment group PenTAG, and played a key role in developing national policy on the adoption of new treatments. He was core to the design and establishment of National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration for the South West Peninsula (PenARC) and its predecessors. Ken will be remembered for his academic rigour, and with great fondness for his excellent humour, kindness and support.

Ken was a public health physician with a background in general practice, health technology assessment and health services research.  Working in the SW CLAHRC and ARC and, in addition to involvement in a range of projects being carried out within the collaboration, he helped to lead the ARC Evidence Synthesis Team and the Peninsula Collaboration for Operational Research and Development (PenCHORD).

Ken graduated in Medicine from University of Bristol in 1987, then trained and worked as a general practitioner in Australia and Hampshire before specialising in public health medicine in Southampton. In 1999 he began work as a Consultant in Public Health Medicine at North and East Devon Health Authority, then Director of Public Health for Mid Devon Primary Care Trust. He combined this NHS work with academic work at the University of Exeter as founding Director of the Peninsula Technology Assessment Group (PenTAG), becoming a full time academic at Exeter in 2003. He was appointed to a Chair in Public Health in 2007.

Alongside his health services research within the University of Exeter, Ken was involved in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and development of national policy on the adoption of new treatments through NICE, where he was a member and vice chair of an Appraisal Committee for 15 years and remain part of their Scientific Advice Programme. He was involved in the National Institute for Health Research HTA programme since its early years in the 1990s and was Editor in Chief of the monograph series Health Technology Assessment, which puts almost all of the programme’s commissioned work into the public domain.  He had a lot of experience in Evidence Synthesis through his work in HTA, the Cochrane Collaboration and PenCLAHRC’s Evidence Synthesis Team. 

Ken was appointed as Director of the NIHR Systematic Review Programme in 2018 - this commissions work from Cochrane and Campbell collaborations and supports the work of NICE through HTA research carried out by teams around the UK.  He was also Editor in Chief of the NIHR Journals LIbrary, which publishes research from NIHR's programmes of research and is a world-leading source of open access publications from publicly funded research.

Qualifications

MB ChB MSc MD DipRACOG MRCGP FFPH

Research group links

• Institute of Health Research
• Health services research

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