The majority of my research has direct impact on healthcare services and public health policy.  My work, and that of colleagues, is helping to transform the efficiency and effectiveness of NHS care delivery through mathematical modelling, resulting in radically improved healthcare systems at policy, commissioning and operational levels.   The underpinning research captures the dynamic and stochastic nature of healthcare processes, which translates into the delivery of user-friendly tools for use by NHS staff themselves to better operate and deploy resources.  Recently funding by Anuerin Bevan University Health Board has led to the establishment of a mathematical modelling unit; the largest of it’s kind in the UK between an Operational Research group and the NHS.   

Particular research contributions include stochastic models for integrated healthcare resource systems (hospital bed capacities, theatre scheduling and workforce planning), novel research on stochastic facility location problems, multi-level simulation, research at the intersection of game theory and queueing theory, conditional phase-type modelling and combined data mining and simulation methodologies.

Over the last 6 years I have been a named research investigator on grant income of in excess of £4.5m.  I am an Editor-in-Chief of Health Systems (Palgrave) (http://www.palgrave-journals.com/hs/index.html and Director of hmc2, a pan-Wales centre bringing together research expertise in mathematical and computational modelling applied to health (www.hmc2.org).  I have won the OR Society’s Goodeve Medal for the best paper published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society, and given numerous plenaries and chaired various conferencesincluding OR50 and the 2011 ORAHS International conference (http://mathsevents.cf.ac.uk/orahs2011/)

Please refer to my personal website www.profpaulharper.com for further details including research papers, grant awards, and resources such as videos of my research talks.