Dr Ian Philp CBE is one of the UK’s most distinguished geriatricians and a leading figure in the global effort to improve the quality of care for older people. His career spans 35 years as a clinician, researcher, national policymaker and social entrepreneur. His purpose: ensuring that older people are treated with the dignity and expertise they deserve. Inspired as a medical student by a night on a geriatric ward, he has dedicated his career to a specialty that was then considered a backwater, mentored by two of its founding figures, Jimmy Williamson and Bobby Irvine.

His academic career at the University of Sheffield, where he held the Chair in Health Care for Older People, produced a team that won the UK hospital team of the year in the care of older people and earned the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education. Here, he began developing what would become his most enduring contribution to global healthcare: the EASYCare assessment tool, created in 1989 following a Public Health Fellowship in the United States under Robert Kane. Over three decades, EASYCare was validated in research involving more than 1 million people across 50 countries, underpinned by over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and adopted by clinicians and health systems worldwide as the international standard for person-centred assessment of older people’s needs.

From 2000 to 2008, Ian served as National Clinical Director for Older People in England - known publicly as the “Old Age Tsar” - under Tony Blair’s government. It was one of the most influential policy roles in the NHS. He used it to tackle age discrimination in health and social care, to campaign for dignity in how older people are treated, to build services that bridge the gap between hospital and home, and to create the first national strategies for stroke, dementia, falls and fractures. The National Service Framework for Older People, which he led, set a new standard for how the NHS approached the care of an ageing population. He also served as a World Health Organisation (WHO) adviser from 1996, shaping international policy on healthy ageing.

Following senior executive roles as Medical Director at NHS trusts, Ian founded Age Care Technologies in 2018 as a social-purpose, for-profit business - translating the EASYCare methodology into digital tools designed for impact at scale. The company provides person-centred assessment, training and data analytics to health systems, care organisations and governments, with its primary commercial focus in the UK and China. Ian is also an Honorary Professor for Older People in the Centre for Health Services Studies at the University of Kent.

Ian has also brought his expertise to a wider public through television, presenting and co-presenting programmes including How to Live Longer and The Young Ones on BBC, and 100 Years Younger in 21 Days on ITV. He was appointed CBE in the Queen’s 2008 Birthday Honours in recognition of his services to older people and healthcare.