Our Founder
The grass is rarely greener on the other side, but it is longer near the fence, and Datchet Consulting is about life along the boundary.
I have spent my life between disciplines and cultures, opting for a joint honours degree and crossing from industry to university at the start of the millennium. While in industry, I was drawn to academia as a supervisor, purchaser of student-written software and member of research panels. As an academic, I focused on applied, cross-disciplinary, research and sought to draw clinicians and business people into the activities I inherited or built. Interfaces are things I understand from both sides, and where I feel most at home.
The interface is where the most interesting problems are and where fewest people have trampled the patch. And the interface is often where the future begins.
Datchet Consulting is my latest trek along the interface and I’m happy to help guide to those in university, a company, or delivering healthcare who want to make better use of what is just over the fence.
The one exception to this borderlands approach is pedagogy – the business of teaching, learning, assessing – which I came to fresh halfway through my career. My guess is that some part of the future of lifelong learning will explode from within this space, so I am keen to work with those who are also passionate about it and to pass on what I little I know.
Terry Young
Let’s boost the quality and cut the cost of education by redesigning the learning experience. Let’s boost the quality and cut the cost of the NHS by service redesign at all levels.
I am a well-organised thinker, shaper, and an extraordinary networker who can attract bright people from diverse backgrounds, encourage them to orientate their thinking around a common challenge, and then co-create new ideas and knowledge with them and their served communities.
For 16 years I designed devices and systems at GEC and Marconi and for the past 16 years as a professor at Brunel, I have built and led large multi-disciplinary research teams in healthcare, while developing key pedagogical innovations.
Analytical and creative, I can co-create strategy and nurture it into practice. In the ‘80s, this meant building an internationally recognised photonic design platform, in the ‘10s it has been The Cumberland Initiative as a multi-partner network to re-design health systems and services.
At a glance:
Academic
2018-present Professor Emeritus, Brunel University London.
2001-2018 Professor of Healthcare systems, Brunel University London
Commercial
2019-present Director Cumberland Initiative Company
2018-present Director, Datchet Consulting
2001-present Consulting as an academic (including through Brunel Healthcare Associates) for public sector and private clients (see Key Achievements, Research and Knowledge Transfer).
1985-2001 GEC plc and then Marconi plc: Started as a research scientist and finished up in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer as Business Development Director, Medical Systems. Turned down an M&A position to become a professor.
Trusteeships, etc.
1991-2015 Various trusteeships for charities turning over £100k-£1M+, School governor, Church leadership team, etc.
Education:
PhD: ‘A high precision laser heterodyne spectrometer’ (Graduated 1986), University of Birmingham
BSc: Electronic Engineering & Physics, Jt. Hons, 1st Class, (1981), University of Birmingham
Esteem:
Professional: Fellow of the British Computer Society
Papers: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=unBF35cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Patents: 8, several cited on Google Scholar (above)
(priority dates 1986-1995)
Income: >£15m as an academic, overwhelmingly as Principal Investigator, mainly EPSRC (5% DH and NHS, 5% industry)
Policy: Diversity Steering Group, Research and Innovation (2015-2017)
(Chair: Minister for Universities and Science)
Research: Named Top 50 NHS Innovator by Health Service Journal (2013) Plenary speaker, IBM Almaden Institute (2010)
International Scientific Advisory Committee, Centre for Translational Molecular Medicine. The committee (all except for the chair) came from outside the Netherlands. We refereed and monitored ~€350M of healthcare projects with medical, academic, and industrial partners (2009-2014)
Et cetera:
I married Danielle 29 years ago and we have three boys and a grandson. I am active in my local church as a speaker and teaching planner, and more generally in publishing easy-read study guides.