President’s Fellow & Managing Partner of RYSE Asset Management
Dr John Lee Allen is a visionary physician scientist, entrepreneur, and investor who has been a driving force in fostering innovation across Europe, the United States, and Asia. His ability to bridge the gap between academia and industry has made him an influential figure in the fields of life sciences, technology, and investment.
Investment and innovation
As the Managing Partner of RYSE Asset Management, Allen utilises venture capital investment as a catalyst to translate groundbreaking science into global impact. Leveraging his technical background as a surgeon and engineer, he has helped ventures to secure multimillion-dollar investments and gain entry into Silicon Valley's renowned accelerator, Y Combinator. Notably, he has led investor partnerships with the largest digital health accelerator in Europe, DigitalHealth.London, and with Novartis, Medtronic, and the NHS, driving the selection and rapid scaling of innovative early-stage companies that are transforming lives.
Beyond investments, Allen advises companies on growth strategies and serves as an Expert-in-Residence at Imperial College London's Business School. An audiology specialist, he played a pivotal role in Specsavers' expansion into the hearing care market. Additionally, he has been appointed a national NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow and Mentor, playing a significant role in validating health technologies as part of the largest programme of its kind globally.
Allen's influence extends to advocacy for UK life science policy. He has led policy development initiatives at the World Health Organization and serves as an Assessor at Innovate UK, the leading source of grant funding and the UK government’s innovation agency, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Research and education
Educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Merton College, Oxford, Allen read Medicine at Imperial College London, Engineering at Southampton, and Neuroscience at the University of Oxford where he earned a research fellowship to Tokyo and Singapore. As a PhD student at Oxford, he worked on cellular and computational techniques to pioneer the development of an implantable medical device, igniting his passion for university-led innovation.
Having developed UK-US collaborations spanning science, technology, and medicine, he designed and conducted clinical trials at Johns Hopkins and improved patient safety as a data scientist at Harvard University. His research insights have been published in prestigious scientific journals and include 3 books.
Board positions
Allen is an NHS Governor at Cambridge University Hospitals, Board Advisor at Oto - an innovative digital therapeutic company, and a member of The Royal Society of Medicine's Digital Health Council. His commitment to knowledge-sharing extends beyond boardrooms, as a visiting lecturer on venture capital at University College London and the University of Oxford's Management in Medicine Programme, empowering and inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors.
Selected publications
- The role of digital health in the future of integrated care. Clinics in Integrated Care, Elsevier, 2022.
- Managing intensive care admissions when there are not enough beds during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review. BMJ Thorax, 2021.
- Global Tracheostomy Collaborative: data-driven improvements in patient safety through multidisciplinary teamwork, standardisation, education, and patient partnership. British Journal of Anaesthesia, Elsevier, 2020.
- Influenza and other emerging respiratory viruses. Medicine, Elsevier, 2017.
- Mortality of emergency abdominal surgery in high-, middle- and low-income countries. British Journal of Surgery, Elsevier, 2016. Clinical Trial Registration number: NCT02179112.
- Patterns of disease in patients at a tertiary referral centre requiring reoperative parathyroidectomy. The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2015.
List of publications available on Google Scholar.