Director, Bloomsbury Institute of Intensive Care Medicine
University College London
London, UK
Mervyn Singer is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London (UCL), UK. He trained in medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London, and then undertook subsequent junior doctor posts in hospitals around the London area. He performed his doctorate research thesis developing a novel hemodynamic monitoring tool using esophageal Doppler ultrasonography; the subsequent technology (CardioQ) is now used in over 30 countries worldwide. He then began formal critical care training in an academic rotation at UCL in 1989 and was appointed Professor in 2001.
He is currently Director of the Bloomsbury Institute of Intensive Care Medicine and runs a research group with specific interests in sepsis and multi-organ failure, tissue oxygenation, infection, novel diagnostics, and monitoring. His research funding comes from the Wellcome Trust, UK Medical Research Council, European Union, and UK National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), among others. He has published widely, with multiple papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and JAMA.
In addition to his esophageal Doppler monitor, Dr. Singer has developed a novel tissue PO2 monitor to gauge the adequacy of tissue perfusion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he collaborated with the Mercedes Formula-1 racing team to develop a flow generator that provided continuous positive airways pressure (CPAP) for patients, a device utilized in 110 hospitals in the UK and approximately 25 countries worldwide. He is currently developing two novel drugs: one for inducing a "suspended animation" state for ischaemia-reperfusion injury and another for improving cardiac function in sepsis. Dr. Singer was the first intensivist appointed as a Senior Investigator by the NIHR (now Emeritus) and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2024 for his services to intensive care medicine.
Dr. Singer lectures widely and has delivered four plenary lectures at the Congresses of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the US Society of Critical Care Medicine, as well as at multiple other international congresses and symposia. He has authored and edited several textbooks, including the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care and the Oxford Handbook of Critical Care, now in its 4th Edition. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Intensive Care Medicine Experimental (ICMx) and co-chaired the International Sepsis Redefinitions Task Force that developed the latest Sepsis-3 definitions.