Ben Allin

Ben Allin is a Postdoctoral Clinical Research Fellow in Paediatric Surgery. He graduated from Imperial College in 2010, before completing foundation training in London, and a Paediatric Surgical Academic Clinical Fellowship in Oxford. His DPhil in Population Health focussed on investigating whether outcomes for children undergoing early surgery could be improved through the development and use of core outcome sets. Ben is a Paediatric Surgical Registrar at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and an Honorary Paediatric Surgical Registrar at Oxford Children’s Hospital. 

Ben’s past research has focussed primarily on conducting large-scale national/international cohort studies, and using Delphi methodology to achieve consensus around clinically important questions. Amongst other things, his work has helped to advance the evidence base for treating children with gastroschisis and Hirschsprung’s disease, and has helped develop a pathway for the management of children with Paediatric Inflammatory Multi-System Syndrome Temporally associated with COVID-19. 

Ben is a co-applicant on a £2 million NIHR HS&DR research grant, the overall aim of which is to investigate whether it is possible to reduce unwarranted variation in outcomes of children’s surgery by developing the Children’s Surgery Outcome Reporting system (CSOR). CSOR will combine routinely collected data, data from electronic operative records, and parent reported outcomes data, and through use of an online dashboard and facilitated feedback, provide individual hospitals with data on how their case-mix adjusted outcomes compare to those of other hospitals. Provision of such feedback will allow investigation of where variation in practice results in variation in outcome.