Robert Istepanian is globally recognized as a pioneer and one of the leading experts in the areas of mobile health and digital health. He is the first scientist to have coined and defined the concept of mobile health (m-Health) in 2003.
Robert Istepanian is a global expert in mobile health innovation and a digital health strategist. In 2020 he was selected as a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) roster of Experts on Digital Health. He was also an expert member of the WHO’s Guideline Development experts Group (GDG) for digital health interventions guidelines.
He obtained his PhD from Loughborough University, UK in 1994, and has since then held senior academic and research professorship posts in UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. He was a visiting professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College, London (2013-2022). A distinguished professor at the college of Public Health-IAU (formerly Dammam) university, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2017-2020).
He was professor of Data Communications for Healthcare and the founding Director of the Medical Information and Network Technologies Research Centre of excellence (MINT) at Kingston University, London, UK (2003-2013). An associate Professor in the Universities of Portsmouth, UK (1995-1998) and Brunel University, London (2000-2003). He also held a visiting Professorship at St. George’s Medical School, University of London (2007-2010). In Canada, he was an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan (Ryerson) University, with an adjunct Professor position at the University of West Ontario, Canada (1999-2000). He was also the Leverhulme distinguished visiting fellow at the Centre for Global e-health Innovation University of Toronto and the University’s Health Network, (2008-2009).
He was awarded several awards from UK and USA, including the 2009 IEEE award for the best IEEE Transactions and most cited paper from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society for his seminal work and paper on mobile healthcare (m-health) published in 2004. He was also recipient of the IEE Heaviside award in 1999 from the Institution of Electrical Engineering (IEE) now (IET), UK.
He is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) in UK since 1999, and was senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in USA.
He also led many funded multidisciplinary research and industrial sponsored projects and clinical trials in the areas of mobile health, e-health and telehealth. These projects were funded by Engineering and Physical Research Council (EPSRC), UK, The European Commission (EU), the British Council, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, Leverhulme Trust, and others. The industrial funded projects and clinical trials included funding from (Motorola, USA) and France Telecom/ Orange, (France, UK) and others major telecom and medical devices companies.
For over two decades he supervised several PhD students, postdoctoral research associates and fellows. Many of those whom later attained professorships and senior industrial positions in UK, China, Canada, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. He also served as an expert on numerous technology and assessment panels in healthcare technology, applications and innovations. These included the post of vice chair of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU’s) focus group on standardization of Machine to Machine (M2M) for e-health services and communication standards (2011-2013). He also served as an expert on the assessment panel of the committee of the National Research Priorities -FNR , Luxembourg, 2018, the Dutch – Philips (STW) partnership program on ‘Healthy Life Style’ (2011-2105). Ireland’s (Science Foundation Ireland SFI- Strategic Research Cluster Grants experts review panel (2008-2011). The Finnish Strategic Centers of Science, Technology and Innovation (SHOK) program on advances on wellbeing evaluation experts panel (2012). The Canada Foundation for Innovation's (CFI) of large scale strategic and leading edge projects for health services in Canada (2009). In addition to these he also served as peer reviewer and panelist on many of the national UK funding bodies that include EPSRC, BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, Department of Health (DOH), Service Delivery Organisation (SDO), Department of Health (DOH), Health Innovation Challenge Fund, National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), BUPA Foundation, Diabetes UK.
Robert Istepanian is regularly invited to speak at keynote and invited lectures at numerous international medical conferences and industry sponsored meetings in areas of mobile health held in UK, EU, USA, Canada, UAE, and elsewhere. These included, keynote speaker at the 13th. and 11th. Armenian Medical World Congresses in (Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2017) and Los Angeles in 2013) respectively. The 3rd Annual Internet of Things Europe Conference (Brussels, 2011); the LTE World Summit- Holland, 2011); the mobile health industry summit in London, 2010, Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Assisted Living 2011 Conference, (London, 2011), Experts forum member - World leading diabetes expert’s forum , International Diabetes Federation- IDF, World Diabetes Congress’, Dubai, 2011), the 26th Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), (Qatar, 2011); the annual Harvard and Partners Telemedicine Conference on ‘Optimising Care Through Communication Technologies’ (Boston, 2005); ‘Building on Broadband Britain’ Conference (London, 2005) and the second International Conference on Smart Homes and Health Telematics, ICOST (Singapore-2004), and many others.
Furthermore, he served on numerous technical committees of the IEEE and other international conferences. He chaired several organising and technical committees of national and international conferences in UK, USA and elsewhere including the Telemed Conferences at the Royal Society of Medicine, London, the IET, London, the 2000 World Medical Congress, Chicago and the successive IEEE- Engineering in Medicine and Biology International Annual Conferences (IEEE-EMBS) of (1997, 1998, 1999, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009,2011 and 2012).
He was on the editorial board of several IEEE transactions and international journals’ including IEEE Transaction on Information Technology in Biomedicine (1997-2011), IEEE Transactions on NanoBioScience ( 2003-2013) and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing(2005-2011), Int. J. of Telemedicine and Applications (2007-2012 and Journal of Mobile Multimedia (2004-2013), Journal of World Medical & Health Policy. He also served as guest editor of several special issues of the IEEE Transactions, including IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine in areas of mobile health (2000, 2004, and 2012) and IEEE Transactions of NanoBioScience (on Microarray Image Processing, 2004). He currently serves on the editorial board of several journals on mobile and digital health.
His publications exceed 200 peer reviewed journal papers, book chapter contributions and conference proceedings. He authored and edited several books in the areas of m-Health, mobile communications for healthcare, m-health, control systems and biomedical signal processing. In 2017, he co-authored with Professor. Bryan Woodward a text book on mobile health ‘m-health Fundamentals and Applications’, published by Wiley- IEEE.
