Prof. A. Wells, MD PhD

Athol Wells, MD, is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, London.  He trained in New Zealand and took up his current post at the Royal Brompton Hospital in 1999.  He was the head of the Interstitial Lung Disease Unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital from 2007 to 2016 and continues to chair the Royal Brompton Hospital ILD research group. 

His research career focused initially on the clinical applicability of CT in ILD diagnosis and prognostic evaluation, as well as linkages between ILD morphology and lung function impairment.  He then studied patterns of progression in individual interstitial lung diseases, creating and developing the disease behaviour classification that was included in the 2013 international reclassification of the idiopathic interstitial pneumonias and underpinned the pivotal INBUILD trial of anti-fibrotic therapy in non-IPF progressive pulmonary fibrosis.  He received the ERS lifetime achievement in interstitial lung disease in 2019.  He is a member of the Fleischner Society and becomes president of the World Association of Sarcoidosis and other Granulomatous Diseases (WASOG) in June 223.    

He has published widely in the field of interstitial lung disease, with IPF, ILD-related pulmonary hypertension and ILD associated with connective tissue disease areas of particular interest.  He is one of the most cited world researchers in interstitial lung disease.  In April 2023, his h-index in the Google Scholar Citations database was 147 (94 since 2018), with 88,015 citations in total.