Louise Fleming

Louise Fleming is a British paediatrician who is Professor of Practice in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London. Her research looks to improve the lives of children with asthma through applied clinical research and innovation. She is a member of the Science Committee of the Global Initiative for Asthma.

Early life and education Louise Fleming became interested in science as a child. She spent a year and a half volunteering at a hospital physiotherapy department, where she realised that working with patients was something she wanted to do as a career. She specialised in respiratory paediatrics. She moved to The Gambia as a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health – Voluntary Service Overseas fellowship. In the Gambia she studied the process of transferring people from local health centres to the main hospital, and designed low cost recommendations to improve the management of children in local health facilities. Fleming returned to the United Kingdom and started a medical doctorate at the National Heart and Lung Institute, where she studied the use of non-invasive markers of inflammation in children with severe asthma. Her research was supported by the British Lung Foundation. After completing her doctorate she finished her specialist training at the Royal Brompton Hospital complemented by an Allergy Fellow post at St Mary's Hospital. This includes studying the different types of asthma that children experience, and looking to identify the best treatments for specific types/people.

Professor Fleming is a member of the board of trustees of the Brompton Fountain, a children's charity which supports children with heart and lung conditions at the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals.

Selected publications