Sarah Deeny Assistant Director

Sarah is Assistant Director of Data Analytics. She provides strategic leadership on Data Analytics for Better Health, and founded the Networked Data Lab.

Since joining the Health Foundation in 2015, Sarah has established a multidisciplinary data analytics team that tackles real world problems affecting the health of the UK.

Novel research and data analysis from the team is used by national and local leaders to make better decisions about health, and health care. The team produces open-source tools and approaches that can be used by others and is developing how we do good analytics - from working with patients and the public, to promoting and developing open data science. The team collaborates with those working in the health and care service, the third sector, as well as leading national and international researchers. The team also designs novel large-scale initiatives that use data to improve health, such as the Networked Data Lab. The team’s analysis informs national policy in relation to the use of health data and data-driven technologies, and Sarah regularly writes and presents on these topics.

Before joining the Health Foundation, Sarah was a Senior Mathematical Modeller at Public Health England from 2010, where she led work using advanced data science techniques, and innovative data linkage, informing the national response to antimicrobial resistant infections. She also collaborated extensively with academics nationally and internationally, supervised PhD students, and taught at UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  

Sarah studied microbiology at Trinity College Dublin, and epidemiology at Imperial College London, where in 2011 she also completed her PhD in mathematical modelling of infectious disease. Sarah currently holds an honorary appointment at UCL, where she is supervising a PhD student.