He has a College Diploma/HND Civil Engineering BIT and a BA Systems
Studies OU. He also has a Certificate in Counselling from the University
of Manchester (trained in therapeutic approaches working with clinical
teams), An MA in Systems in Management from Lancaster University and a
Ph.D. from the same university. His doctoral thesis was titled:
'Metaphor and Systemic Praxis': On the Fundamental and Multiple concepts
of 'System'.
He worked as structural/civil engineer for from 15-30 - developed CAD
programmes in Fortran and has been a tutor on all OU systems courses. He
also had a position as Wellcome Foundation Lecturer in Management
Science at the University of Liverpool Medical School. He also was a
Director of the MSc in Health Information Management at the University
of Manchester and the Director of the MSc in Health Informatics and the
MSc in General Practice of the European Institute of Health and Medical
Sciences from 1997 to 1999. He is now a Brunel University Senior
Lecturer in Information Systems and a member of the Living Systems Group
and chairs the multidisciplinary Centre for Health Information Systems
and Computing.
He has researched into and developed the Soft Information Systems and
Technologies Methodology (SISTeM). It is an approach that is used for
the integration of organisational and informational development and is
based on the notion of human/machine activity systems. The approach
brings together systemic problem solving with IS development
methodologies and tools as well as processes modelling and cultural
change approaches. It is used in the producing of integrated Strategies
for 'Growing not Building' the maturation pathways of organisational,
multi-organisational' networks. Currently he is developing the systemic
concept of organisational architecture 'OrganiTecture' as an
underpinning discipline for SISTeM, based on Actor-Network Theory.
He is also a consultant and has done a great deal of work with National
Health Service Executive and other healthcare organisations. This has
included the development of the Electronic Patient Record, NHS IS
strategies and participative IS applications development and
procurement. Now he is working on a joint European Union project to set
up an Internet based Health Informatics Centre in China.
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