Edward Despott

London, UK

Associate Professor (University College London)
Consultant Gastroenterologist, Interventional Endoscopist & Lead Clinician for Endoscopy
The Royal Free Hospital & UCL Institute for Liver & Digestive Health, London

Edward is a Consultant Gastroenterologist, Interventional Endoscopist and Clinical Lead at the Royal Free Unit for Endoscopy of the Royal Free Hospital in central London. He is also an Associate Professor at University College London and the Senior Associate Editor of VideoGIE (the flagship educational journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the ASGE).

Since his appointment to lead the Royal Free Unit for Endoscopy, 11-years ago, he has established one of the busiest and most highly-respected tertiary referral centre for double-balloon enteroscopy (DBE) outside its birthplace of Japan. Also from scratch, he has also built one of the very few tertiary referral centres for endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) in the UK.

Edward is regularly invited to demonstrate live-endoscopy cutting-edge procedures and to deliver lectures at international conferences of high repute, and is a co-directing founder of the highly successful International Advanced Endoscopy Masterclass (AEM) London. He forms part of the European Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) guidelines committee and is a co-author of this Society’s guideline, technical review, performance measures and curriculum for small-bowel endoscopy. He is also the Chair of the World Endoscopy Organisation (WEO) Standards of Practice and Publications committee and is an elected Fellow of the ASGE and an inaugural elected Fellow of the ESGE. He is an international Fellow of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society (JGES) and has given the invited international plenary lecture at the Japanese Digestive Disease Week 2021, and the Hetenyi plenary lecture of the Hungarian Society (to which he has also been elected to be an honorary Fellow).

Edward maintains a strong research interest and supervises several international advanced endoscopy fellows. He publishes widely and is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed publications, in journals of high impact. He has always maintained strong-ties with his original birthplace of Malta, and in his spare time enjoys painting seascapes in oils, photography, and off-shore fishing.