People

John Fox

Head of Laboratory

John Fox trained in cognitive psychology at Durham and Cambridge Universities, and then held postdoctoral fellowships in psychology and Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie-Mellon and Cornell Universities between 1973 and 1975. After returning to the UK, he was a Research Scientist with the Medical Research Council where he initiated research on clinical decision support systems and cognitive modelling (themes which continue in his current research.

Since 1981 he has been responsible for directing the Advanced Computation Laboratory, supervising a wide programme of research in theoretical and applied AI. He is currently collaborating on a number of national and international projects in a variety of areas including:

  • Knowledge-based services based on Argumentation Systems (ASPIC)
  • Speech and natural language interfaces for point of care clinical services (HOMEY)
  • Cognitive modelling (COGENT)
  • Care planning under uncertainty (REACT)
Fox is scientific co-ordinator of the EU 6th Framework ASPIC project (Argumentation Service Platform with Integrated Components).

A notable recent achievement by Fox and members of the ACL has been the development of PROforma , a method and technology for authoring and enacting clinical guidelines and protocols at the point of care. The CREDO project, running since 2003, is designed to carry out a clinical trial of PROforma technology in improving consistency, quality and safety in the care of cancer patients.

Fox was managing director, until February 1999, of InferMed Ltd . This company, a joint venture between Cancer Research UK and Integral Solutions Ltd, was set up to commercialise a range of clinical applications based on technologies developed by the ACL (PROforma in particular).

He is founding editor of the Knowledge Engineering Review (Cambridge University Press), having been editor from 1984-97. He has published some 100 papers and edited four books . His most recent book, Safe and Sound: Artificial Intelligence in Hazardous Applications, written in collaboration with Subrata Das of Charles River Analytics (USA), was published in June 2000 by MIT Press and the American Association of Artificial Intelligence.

Email

john.foxcancer.org.uk