Luigi Pisani

Currently a postdoc clinical researcher at MORU in Bangkok, Thailand where he co-leads the MORU Critical Care Asia-Africa Network, Luigi is an intensivist-anaesthesiologist trained in Italy, with a passion for critical care in low-resource settings. The Critical Care Asia-Africa Network is a Wellcome Flagship Innovations project, setting up in 15 countries in South Asia and Africa a network for critical care data-driven research and quality improvement using a cloud-based registry, with Luigi closely involved in its work in Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Africa) and Bangladesh.

Luigi has been at MORU since 2017, when he undertook his PhD at Amsterdam University and MORU in 2017-20, with a focus on mechanical ventilation, pulmonary ultrasound and monitoring in low- and middle-income countries, with studies involving South Asian countries and Sierra Leone.

Luigi’s research focus is studies blending physiology, clinical research and epidemiology aiming to improve care for critically ill patients in Africa and Asia.  

At MORU, he also leads two MOTIP-funded projects focused on validating and extending the use of lung ultrasound in African children with critical illness: i. the lung ultrasound in severe malaria study (2018-2022): and ii. the Innovative health technologies for low-resource settings: lung ultrasound-implemented differential diagnosis of acute respiratory distress in African children (2022 to date). In addition, Luigi closely collaborates with OUCRU in Vietnam working on machine learning applications in lung ultrasound.

Luigi co-supervises several PhD students from Africa, Europe and Asia in the UK (Oxford University), Netherlands (University of Amsterdam) and Brazil (D’Or Institute in Rio de Janeiro). He also heads critical care operational research for Doctors with Africa CUAMM, Italy’s largest and oldest health NGO, and is a member of the ICU benchmarking platform LOGIC, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), and the Italian Intensive Care Quality Improvement Group (GIVITI).

A busy clinician, Luigi works as a consultant intensivist in the ICU of Miulli Regional Hospital in Puglia, Italy.