Mike Morgan obituary | Medical research

Mike Morgan, who has died aged 75, was a leading figure in Leicester’s respiratory services for more than 30 years. He also championed respiratory medicine at the highest level. It has long been a poor cousin compared to other areas of medicine, but, as national clinical director for respiratory diseases at NHS England from 2013 to 2019, Morgan ensured that it had an important place in the long-term national strategy set out in the NHS England 10-year health plan in 2019. The aim was to transform outcomes by diagnosing diseases earlier with better access to spirometry (a test of pulmonary function) and increase the supply for the key treatment, pulmonary rehabilitation.

When Morgan started working as a consultant respiratory doctor at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester in 1988, he joined a small team, with two other doctors (there are now more than 20 respiratory specialists). They faced a daunting challenge: Respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were widespread. Not only can they cause crippling shortness of breath and plague the lives of sufferers, but they are also one of the leading causes of death.

The fact that respiratory diseases receive only a fraction of the research funding spent on cancer or heart disease may be partly because, along with causes such as pollution, damp housing and smoking, they disproportionately affect people living in socially deprived areas, who may not be as vocal or politically active.

When he started working at Glenfield Hospital, Morgan quickly became interested in the potential of exercise in pulmonary rehabilitation and in preventing the “vicious spiral” in which a COPD patient is less active because they are out of breath, causing them to lose fitness and become more frail, and in turn become more out of breath.

In 1992, he worked with physiotherapist Sally Singh to develop an “Incremental Disability Shuttle Gait Test” to measure patients’ fitness. They also researched and developed a pulmonary rehabilitation program including exercises, lifestyle management and education about the disease, and co-authored Practical Pulmonary Rehabilitation, published in 1998.

Bronchodilators and other medications were the mainstay of COPD treatment in the 1990s, and Morgan’s support for exercise therapy was initially met with skepticism from some doctors. However, he and his Leicester colleagues were vindicated. Morgan was instrumental in establishing national COPD audit programs (now part of the National Respiratory Audit Program), which studied the effectiveness of pulmonary rehabilitation, and there is now a wealth of evidence to support its use. Today it is a standard treatment in the UK for people with COPD and other respiratory illnesses and is used in many other parts of the world, including low- and middle-income countries such as India and Uganda.

In addition to his own research, which encompassed sleep disorders as well as COPD, Morgan was passionate about building bridges between academics and clinicians, and was a founding member of the Leicester Institute for Lung Health in 2000. This fosters links between academic researchers and clinicians to accelerate evidence-based medicine from ‘bench to bedside’. As of 2020, it has attracted more than £100 million in funding and published more than 700 papers. It is now one of the largest respiratory research units in the world, particularly successful in the field of COPD and asthma.

In 2016, Morgan became president of the British Thoracic Society, the professional body for respiratory specialists, and he received its 2019 medal for his contribution to respiratory medicine.

Mike (Michael) was born in Ealing, west London. His father, Leslie, worked for the Great Western Railway and was at the time stationmaster at Paddington Station. Michael’s mother, Georgina (née Lane), was a housewife and he had an older sister, Jane. The family later moved to Chester and then Cardiff, where as a teenager Michael watched rugby at the Cardiff Arms Park.

From the age of nine, he attended Taunton School in Somerset, where he played rugby and judo. He studied medicine at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and completed his clinical training at University College Hospital, London, where he qualified as a doctor in 1975.

In 1981, Morgan married Clare Derrington, an anesthetist, and the couple had two sons, Charlie and Theo.

Morgan worked as a junior doctor in several specialties during the 1970s and initially thought he wanted to specialize in geriatrics. However, he had the idea to change direction when he worked for leading respiratory doctor Martin McNicol at London’s Central Middlesex Hospital. A practical man, Morgan was interested in how the lungs worked and appreciated the fact that many patients with respiratory problems could be helped to improve their quality of life.

In 1985 he became Senior Registrar in Thoracic and General Medicine at East Birmingham District Hospital (now Heartlands Hospital) before moving to Leicester in 1988.

Morgan continued to see patients into his 70s, working through the Covid pandemic (although not on the frontline) before finally retiring in 2022. He continued to enjoy watching rugby throughout his life and, while working at Leicester, he took up sailing and was a member of the Rutland Sailing Club. In 2025, he and Clare moved to Chichester in West Sussex.

He is survived by Clare, Charlie and Theo, four grandchildren and his sister Jane.