Dr William Whiteley (BM BCh MA MSc PhD MRCP)
Reader in Neurology and Consultant Neurologist

- Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
- Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics
Contact details
Background
William Whiteley is a Scottish Senior Clinical Fellow (funded by CSO) in the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh.
He is also Senior Clinical Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford; an International Fellow at the Population Health Research Institute, University of McMaster (Canada); and a consultant neurologist in NHS Lothian, working with patients with TIA, stroke and dementia.
Qualifications
Master of Science, University of London, Epidemiology Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Edinburgh, Biomarkers in Stroke Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, University of Oxford Bachelor of Arts, University of Cambridge, Neurophysiology
Responsibilities & affiliations
Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton, Canada
Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, UK
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I have a track record of supporting interested clinicians gain independent funding, and have mentored several fellows through academic clinical fellowships. If you would like to join me to investigate clinical epidemiology, clinical trials, cerebrovascular disease, or use of 'big data' please contact me by email: william.whiteley@ed.ac.uk
Current PhD students supervised
Dr. Emma Davidson, PhD: Identifying brain imaging phenotypes in radiology records (Alzheimer's Society)
Dr. Jakub Kaczynski, PhD: Novel methods to identify high risk carotid plaque (BHF)
Laura Sherlock, PhD: Effect of different analytic techniques on cognitive outcomes in prevention of vascular cognitive impairment (CSO)
Past PhD students supervised
Dr. Yvonne Chun Efficient trials and anxiety after stroke (CSO)
Dr Akila Visvanathan Communication of prognosis after stroke (CSO)
Dr. Douglas Turnbull Predictive models after stroke (MRC)
Research summary
-
His work seeks to elucidate the mechanisms for prevention of disability due to stroke and dementia through the design, delivery and analysis of epidemiological studies and clinical trials. Of particular interest are: the contribution of vascular risk factors to dementia; the very long term follow-up of randomized trials; clinical diagnosis; and the better use of large electronic health record datasets for more efficient clinical trials and cohort studies.
He founded the Edinburgh Clinical Natural Language Processing Group with Dr Honghang Wu and Dr Bea Alex, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Edinburgh who apply natural language processing to clinical text.
He has founded and run the Edinburgh Stroke Winter School and clinical PhD research training programs in stroke (funded by the Stroke Association) and dementia (funded by the Alzheimer's Society and University of Edinburgh). He has been supported by personal fellowships from the UK MRC (Clinician Scientist fellowship 2010-2015), the Chief Scientist’s Office (2006-2009, 2018-2025), and his work by the Alzheimer's Society, the Stroke Association and Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland
Research activities
- Bayer (External organisation)
- UK Stroke Forum 2020 to
- European Stroke Conference 2020 to
- British Heart Foundation (External organisation)
- NIHR (External organisation)
- University of Manchester (External organisation)
- PHRI, Population Health Research Institute, Canada (External organisation)
- NIHR (External organisation)
- World Stroke Organisation (External organisation)
- PhD examination
- PHRI, Population Health Research Institute, Canada (External organisation)
- European Course in Minimally Invasive Neurological Therapy (ECMINT)
- UK Stroke Forum
- European Stroke Organisation Conference to
- American Heart Association (External organisation) to
- Stroke Association (External organisation) to
- Swiss National Science Foundation (External organisation)
- NIHR (External organisation) to
- PhD examination
- AHA Stroke Journal (External organisation)
-
Explainable Automated Coding of Clinical Notes using Hierarchical Label-wise Attention Networks and Label Embedding Initialisation
In:
Journal of biomedical informatics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2021.103728
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
European Stroke Organisation (ESO) guidelines on intravenous thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke
In:
European Stroke Journal, pp. 239698732198986
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2396987321989865
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Role of Blood-Based Biomarkers in Ischemic Stroke Prognosis: A Systematic Review
In:
Stroke
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.120.029232
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Predicting specific abilities after disabling stroke: Development and validation of prognostic models
In:
International Journal of Stroke, pp. 1747493020982873
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1747493020982873
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Association of baseline hematoma and edema volumes with one-year outcome and long-term survival after spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage: A community-based inception cohort study
In:
International Journal of Stroke, pp. 174749302097428
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1747493020974282
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Not a cute stroke: Analysis of Rule- and Neural Network-based Information Extraction Systems for Brain Radiology Reports
(14 pages)
Research output: Contribution to Workshop › Conference contribution (Published) -
Comparison of Rule-based and Neural Network Models for Negation Detection in Radiology Reports
(22 pages)
In:
Natural Language Engineering
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324920000509
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
How to design a hypertension treatment trial that informs care of older people with frailty: a survey of clinicians in Ireland and the UK
In:
Age and Ageing
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaa198
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Monitoring indirect impact of COVID-19 pandemic on services for cardiovascular diseases in the UK
In:
Heart, pp. heartjnl-2020-317870
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/heartjnl-2020-317870
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Accuracy of identifying incident stroke cases from linked healthcare data in UK Biobank
In:
Neurology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000009924
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print)