Richard Smith

I am the director of the Ovations initiative run by world-leading health care organization United Healthcare and originally for the U.K. Its mission is to combat chronic disease in the developing world. The initiative funds centers in China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, Tanzania, South Africa, Central America, and the US Mexico border.

I am a member of the board of the Public Library of Science and also an honorary professor at the University of Warwick. Moreover, I am a member of the governing council of St George’s, University of London, and editor of Cases Journal, a new electronic journal that aims to publish tens of thousands of case reports a year. Previously I was chief executive of UnitedHealth Europe, a subsidiary of the UnitedHealth Group that works with public health systems in Europe.

Before that, I was an editor of the British Medical Journal and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. Having qualified in medicine in Edinburgh, I have worked in a hospital in Scotland and New Zealand before joining the BMJ. I have also worked for six years as a television doctor with the BBC and TV-AM and I have a degree in management science from the Stanford Business School.

I love making soup, marmalade, and trouble.