Dr Brij Patel is clinical director for adult critical care and extracorporeal life support services at the Royal Brompton hospital. He is a clinical associate professor in cardiothoracic critical care at Imperial College London where he leads a basic and translational research programme investigating severe cardiac and respiratory failure, particularly those supported on extracorporeal devices.

Brij is a physician scientist, and his laboratory team examines the pathophysiology and progression of cellular death, inflammation, and fibroproliferation within the ARDS lung and in response to mechanical ventilation using pre-clinical and ex vivo models. His laboratory also investigates immune and coagulation activation in response to extracorporeal circuits and ventricular assist devices.

Clinical studies investigate physiology-based ventilation algorithms (based on a combination of artificial intelligence and decision theory) to personalise mechanical ventilation and understand cardiopulmonary physiology during mechanical ventilation. He is chief investigator of the NIHR funded ROMEO study which is examining total lung rest using near-apnoeic ventilation versus standard care within the UK VV-ECMO network.

He is a member of the ELSO research nucleus, contributes to the International ECMONet group, and is chair for research working group in the NHS highly specialised commissioned ECMO network.