Professor Bill Irish practised as a GP in the UK for 25 years, and held a position on RCGP Board, before retiring to take up his current role. He is the UK lead postgraduate dean for the specialties of acute medicine, infectious disease and pre hospital emergency medicine. He is the Health Education England dean for integrated academic and clinical training for doctors and dentists.

Bill holds visiting chairs of medical education at the universities of Bristol and East Anglia and has research interests in high-stakes assessment, medical trainee recruitment and selection.

Bill describes himself as being fortunate to be deployed as clinical lead for a large Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone during the recent pandemic.