
Committee Member

Professor Helen Higham


Consultant Anaesthetist
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Helen is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, a Consultant Anaesthetist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Associate Dean for Simulation and Patient Safety at NHSE-Thames Valley.
She is the Director of OxSTaR, the University of Oxford’s simulation and patient safety research centre, (www.oxstar.ox.ac.uk ). Helen has led and supported many safety incident investigations in the NHS and has delivered national training programmes in systems-based incident investigation. She was a founding executive member and a past president of the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare in the UK and provides expert input for national committees in patient safety and human factors training, the Foundation Curriculum and the Safe Anaesthesia Liaison Group. She currently leads the Human Factors module on the Masters in Surgical Science and Practice in the University of Oxford.
Her research interests include human factors and simulation-based education in healthcare with current projects focused on system based approaches to safety in primary care, human factors in low to middle income healthcare settings and the use of virtual reality to train healthcare professionals.
Outside work she is a keen baker and a “fair weather” diver.
Dedicated to advancing the understanding and application of human factors in surgery, anaesthesia and peri-operative medicine.