Professor Ailsa Hart

About

• Biography icon plus

  Ailsa Hart is Director of St Mark's Hospital Inflammatory Bowel Disease Unit and Consultant Gastroenterologist. She is Sub-Dean of St Mark's Hospital Academic Institute. In 2016, she achieved academic promotion with Imperial College and is now Professor of Practice.
  
  Ailsa Hart studied medicine at Oxford University and was awarded a First Class Honours Degree in 1992, together with the George Pickering Prize for Medicine and Surgery proxime accessit in 1995 and additional prizes for outstanding achievements. She achieved Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in 1998 and subsequently Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians. She trained in Gastroenterology and General Internal Medicine in London and also received training at the Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam. She achieved her PhD with Imperial College in 2005.
  
  Her clinical work covers the spectrum of gastrointestinal diseases, with a particular interest in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis. Her research interests focus on intestinal immunology and bacteriology, aiming to further our understanding of the pathogenesis of inflammatory intestinal disorders via clinical trials and translational research. She has links with laboratories within Imperial College, particularly metabolic profiling, bacteriology and mucosal immunology. She has piloted faecal transplantation as a treatment for refractory pouchitis, funded by the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation and has an ongoing research interest in the gut microbiome. Other particular research interests include pathogenesis of IBD, role of vitamin D, perianal Crohn's disease, pouchitis and surveillance of IBD patients for dysplasia or colorectal cancer. She has supervised/ co-supervised over 20 higher degree students and lectures widely nationally and internationally.
  
  She is currently Chair of the British Society of Gastroenterology Gut Microbiota for Health Group. She has been a member of the Clinical Committee of the European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation (ECCO); is on the IBD Clinical Research Group Committee for the British Society of Gastroenterology; UK Patient and Public Involvement Lead for Gastroenterology; on the Research Committee for the Crohn's and Colitis UK charity; collaborates widely across the UK particularly within the UK IBD Genetics Consortium; and is a member of the International Organisation for IBD (IOIBD), which is a group of approximately 50 top clinicians globally involved in IBD – she is only one of three members from the UK and the only UK woman involved.
  
  She is Associate Editor of the popular gastroenterology journal Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, has published two books, with "Inflammatory Bowel Disease – an Evidence-based Practical Guide" selling over 2500 copies, and more than 130 papers and book chapters.
  
  Recent feedback from a patient was "Prof Hart is like IBD royalty - you just know you're in the safest, most capable and best possible hands. There's the National IBD Standards and then there's the Ailsa Hart IBD care standards, which are even higher and unbeatable."

• Clinical interests icon plus

  General gastroenterology, endoscopy, inflammatory bowel diseases and functional bowel disease