John Radcliffe Hospital

Professor Sir John Bell attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar to train in medicine and undertook postgraduate training in London and at Stanford University. He returned to Oxford as a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow in 1987 and was elected to the Nuffield Professorship of Clinical Medicine in Oxford in 1992. In 2002 he became the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. He is also President of the Academy of Medical Sciences and founded the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford.

Sir Jonathan qualified as a doctor at St Thomas Hospital Medical School. In 1980 he was appointed Consultant Physician and Nephrologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Birmingham University. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London) in 1985.

Sir Jonathan became increasingly involved in hospital management during the 1990s, being appointed Clinical Director, then Medical Director and finally Chief Executive of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust. In 2000 he was recruited to the position of Chief Executive of Guys and St Thomas Hospitals NHS Trust in London, an organisation that he led to become one of the first wave of Foundation Trusts in the NHS.

He has held a number of regional and national roles including membership of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration Board, Chairmanship of the Board of NHS Innovations (London), Chairmanship of the Association of UK University Hospitals and Chairmanship of the Board of the NHS Foundation Trust Network. Sir Jonathan was knighted in the New Years Honours in 2005 for services to the NHS.

In the same year he was elected Fellow of Kings College London in recognition of his contribution to the relationship between the health service and higher education. In 2007 Sir Jonathan was appointed by the Secretary of State for Health, to chair an Independent Inquiry into the access to healthcare for children and adults with learning disabilities. The report, Healthcare For All, was published in July 2008. Before joining the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust (formerly Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust), Sir Jonathan was Managing Director of BT Health.