Owase Jeelani

Noor ul Owase Jeelani is a Kashmiri-British neurosurgeon and academic. He is a consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) and was the Head of the Department of Neurosurgery from 2012 until 2018.[1] He is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Child Health, University College London.[2] He leads the FaceValue research group in Craniofacial Morphometrics, device design, and clinical outcomes.[3]

Jeelani is known for his work separating craniopagus twins in 2011,[4] 2019,[5] 2020[6] 2021,[7] 2022[8] and 2024.[9]

In 2019, he founded the charity Gemini Untwined.[10]

Education and career

Jeelani obtained his Medical Degree in 1997 from the University of Nottingham.[1] His basic surgical training took place in Nottingham and Southampton, and his Neurosurgical and Craniofacial training took place in the UK and Canada.[1] He undertook fellowships in Paediatric Neurosurgery and Craniofacial Surgery at GOSH and at Sick Kids, Toronto. He also holds a master's degree in medical law from the University of Glasgow and an MBA from INSEAD.[1]

In 2012 Jeelani was appointed as the Lead Clinician for the Department of Neurosurgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital.[1] Jeelani was named in ‘The Times’ top 100 surgeons in the UK in 2011[11] and the top 100 children's doctors in 2012.[12]

He led the successful separation of five sets of conjoined twins: Rital and Ritag in 2011,[4] Safa and Marwa in 2019,[13] Yigit and Derman in 2020[6] and two Israeli twins in 2021.[14] In 2022 Jeelani was part of a UK and Brazilian team that separated Bernardo and Arthur Lima, two Brazilian twins, in a 33 hour operation.[15] On July 19, 2024, Jeelani lead a team at Ankara Bilkent City Hospital in Turkey, using mixed reality technology, to complete a 14-hour second stage surgery to separate Pakistani twins, Minal and Mirha.[9] These procedures were covered extensively by international media outlets.[16][17][18]

Since 2012 he has been the co-director of FaceValue, a research programme based at University College London (UCL) that specialises in designing machine learning algorithms to improve surgical outcomes.[19]

In 2007, Jeelani invented CranioXpand, a spring distractor technology for minimally invasive Craniofacial surgery.[20] The IP was obtained by KLS Martin, a medical devices company.[21]

Jeelani undertakes healthcare advisory work for the NHS and other private organisations.[22] In 2003 he founded a strategy consulting company, Interface Health Solutions.

Charity Work

In 2019, he co-founded Gemini Untwined, a global charity dedicated to supporting the research and treatment for CPT twins.[23]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Owase Jeelani". GOSH Hospital site.
  2. ^ "Iris View Profile". iris.ucl.ac.uk.
  3. ^ "Face Value". GOSH Charity.
  4. ^ a b France, Louise. "Separate lives: Rital and Ritag's incredible story" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  5. ^ "Conjoined twins return home after successful separation". BBC News. 19 October 2020.
  6. ^ a b Correspondent, Hannah Lucinda Smith, Istanbul | Kat Lay, Health. "Conjoined twins go home to enjoy their time apart" – via www.thetimes.co.uk. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ Rose, Hilary. "The surgeons who separated conjoined twins Safa and Marwa". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  8. ^ "Conjoined twins separated with the help of virtual reality". BBC News. August 2022. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  9. ^ a b "Rare conjoined twin girls separated after 14 hour operation". Sky News. September 2024. Retrieved 19 September 2024.
  10. ^ "About Gemini". Gemini Untwined.
  11. ^ Reid, Melanie. "Britain's top surgeons" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  12. ^ Naish, John. "Britain's top children's doctors 2012" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  13. ^ "Conjoined Twin Girls Separated After 50 Hours of Operations". Time.
  14. ^ "Separated conjoined year-old twins see each other for the first time". NBC News.
  15. ^ "Conjoined twins who shared fused brains successfully separated in Brazil". Sky News. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
  16. ^ Baring, Lucinda (13 July 2020). "How to give it… to Great Ormond Street Hospital". www.ft.com.
  17. ^ Karasz, Palko (16 July 2019). "Conjoined Twins, Linked at Skull, Are Separated in London Hospital". The New York Times.
  18. ^ "BBC".
  19. ^ "Craniofacial Group: FaceValue". UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. 1 June 2018.
  20. ^ Jeelani, Noor Ul Owase (31 March 2019). Di Rocco, Concezio; Pang, Dachling; Rutka, James T. (eds.). Textbook of Pediatric Neurosurgery. Springer International Publishing. pp. 1–15. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31512-6_73-1. S2CID 59317127 – via Springer Link.
  21. ^ Hooper, Rowan. "Watching surgeons expand a baby's skull". New Scientist.
  22. ^ "Owase Jeelani | International and Private Care - GOSH". www.gosh.ae.
  23. ^ Speare-Cole, Rebecca (16 July 2019). "Surgeons who separated conjoined twins launch charity to fund research". www.standard.co.uk.