Professor Kiran Patel
Professor Kiran Patel is group chief medical officer (CMO); deputy chief executive officer (CEO); and consultant cardiologist at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
He came into the role in 2024, after five years as CMO and deputy CEO at University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire. Prior to that, he spent six years as medical director for NHS England (West Midlands).
He graduated from King's College, Cambridge University in 1993 and has been a practising consultant cardiologist since 2005, continuing to practice despite a busy managerial role.
He was appointed an honorary professor at Warwick and Coventry Universities in 2018. He was also clinical lead for the Coventry and Warwickshire ICS (2019-22).
As a senior NHS leader he has managed significant transformational change not only in cardiac services, but as NHSE medical director for the West Midlands (2014-19), clinical director at West Midlands Strategic Health authority (2009-11) and medical director for West Mercia PCT Cluster (2011-13).
In the voluntary sector, he has been chair of trustees to the South Asian Health Foundation charity (which he founded in 1999) since inception. He was also a trustee for three terms at the UK Health Forum from 2003-12. He is a mentor for the Social Mobility Foundation which encourages and mentors students from deprived communities into the healthcare sector and further education.
In healthcare policy and strategy, he has worked with NICE, the Royal Colleges and the Department of Health and Social Care for over two decades. He has published papers and books and lectured widely on a national and international scale, not only in the field of cardiology, but more widely on social determinants and healthcare systems and strategy. Such expertise gleaned from both the NHS and voluntary sectors, led to him advising the Public Health Foundation of India on developing healthcare systems in 2009-10 and he also co-authored the UK Ministerial briefing for the UN Summit on non-communicable disease in 2011. He served nine years as a non-executive director on the board of the BMJ group to drive globalisation of education and training to achieve its mission of a healthier world (2012-2021).
As part of that global health system work he recently advised the Thai government and is currently advising the Indonesian government on health system strengthening.
He was recognised in the HSJ Top 100 leaders in 2014 and in the HSJ Tope 50 BAME leaders in the same year (and again in 2024). In 2022 he led UHCW to win the HSJ Health Inequalities and Innovation award for work on reducing inequalities in restoration of NHS services following the pandemic. In 2021, he was recognised at the 37th most influential UK Asian in the GG2 powerlist and in 2024 was voted Man of the Year by the Asian Media Group.
An impressive random fact is that he prescribed the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial on that amazing day of 8 December 2020.
In his spare time, he loves sport – indeed, he has moved from cricket, which he played to a high standard, to football. He holds a season ticket for West Bromwich Albion FC and when not running half-marathons he enjoys attending most WBA home matches with his wife and four daughters.