Systematic review and Individual participant data meta analysis.

Work with clinical studies in children and adults to define similarities and differences between treatment effects and risk-prediction.

Children's medicine, particularly paediatric oncology.

Ethics of research with children, young people and families.

Bob is a Professor of Paediatrics and Evidence Synthesis at the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York and Hull/York Medical School, and an Honorary Consultant in Paediatric / Teenage-Young Adult Oncology at Leeds Children's Hospital. 

He is also the Director of the Candlelighters Supportive Care Research Centre, where is main areas of work are in the development of supportive care for children with cancer, individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis, and the development of skills in appraisal and translation of clinical research in practice. He is the lead of the PICNICC collaboration, “Predicting Infectious ComplicatioNs In Children with Cancer” which was formed by engaging clinical and methodological experts from 22 different study groups from 15 countries, parent representatives and healthcare researchers to investigate patterns of risk in febrile neutropenia. 

Bob qualified in Medicine from Somerville College, Oxford in 1997 after an undergraduate career in Clare College, Cambridge. He worked at CRD as an MRC Training Fellow since 2007, before being appointed at the CRD in 2013, then a join appointment with HYMS from 2021.  He has worked extensively to promote and teach evidence-based practice with the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine in Oxford, UK, and also the Centre for Evidence-based Child Health (Institute of Child Health, London, UK). He edits the evidence-based practice sections of the Archives of Diseases in Childhood, and is an associate editor of the journal. He has lectured in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and the Nordic Countries on the subject of evidence based practice, and has written widely on this.  Bob was the Clinical Lead for the NICE Guideline (CG151) on the management of Neutropenic Sepsis. In addition to the work in febrile neutropenia, he has undertaken many systematic reviews assessing the quality of evidence underlying interventions to ameliorate the side effects of cancer treatments in childhood. These areas include a Cochrane systematic review of the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, the treatment of constipation, and management of mucositis. He has worked with the Cochrane Child Health field, the PRISMA-IPD group, and the Department of Health funded Children and Young People's Health Outcomes forum and the Martin House Research Centre to encourage the production, development and use of high-quality health research in the care of children and young people.