Prof Aneel Bhangu

Professor Aneel Bhangu is Professor of Surgery at the University of Birmingham and Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at University Hospitals Birmingham. His clinical practice covers colorectal cancer, proctology, and general surgical emergencies.

His research programme is built around improving the safety and outcomes of surgical care — in the NHS and, particularly, across low- and middle-income countries. He leads large international prospective cohort studies and pragmatic randomised trials designed to generate evidence that changes practice at scale. Much of this work has been delivered in partnership with surgeons and hospitals across sub-Saharan Africa, including long-standing collaborations with Ghanaian institutions and trainees.

Aneel has published over 350 peer-reviewed papers (h-index 65), with coverage in media across 110 countries including The Economist and major national newspapers. His book, High Performance Research Teams, is available at https://bit.ly/4ptWLkp.

As Global Chief Investigator of the COVIDSurg Collaborative, he coordinated the international research response on surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic, producing multiple high-impact publications including in The Lancet. Independent impact analysis credits the programme with saving many thousands of lives worldwide by informing safer perioperative care. He gave verbal evidence to the Colorectal Cancer Pillar of the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry.

He was a founding member of the GlobalSurg Collaborative and led the first grant that established the Global Surgery Unit at Birmingham, now one of the largest global surgery research groups in the world. He convenes Surgery Systems Live (SSL), an annual international conference bringing together surgeons, researchers, industry, and policymakers to advance the systems, technology, and evidence base underpinning safer surgical care.