Professor Steve Webb graduated from medicine at the University of Western Australia in 1987 and trained as an adult intensive care physician with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. His research training comprises a PhD from Imperial College and a Masters of Public Health from the University of Western Australia. He has been an ICU specialist at Royal Perth Hospital since 2001 where he continues to have substantial clinical commitments caring for patients who are critically ill. He holds adjunct professorial appointments at the University of Western Australia, Monash University, and the George Institute for Global Health.
His major research interests relate to the causes and management of various forms of immediately life-threatening illness and include influenza and pneumonia, long-term outcomes after critical illness, resuscitation of patients with septic shock, management of traumatic brain injury, pathogenesis of septic shock, antimicrobial therapy, blood transfusion, sedation practices, rehabilitation and mobilisation, choice of intravenous resuscitation fluids, and the delivery and evaluation of healthcare services. As a trialist he has randomised more than 20,000 patients and the results of those trials have regularly changed clinical practice and healthcare policy. He led time-critical observational studies that were pivotal in establishing the severity of the 2009 influenza A H1N1 pandemic.
Professor Webb has also played a major leadership role in research policy and management, in Australia and globally, having been a rotating chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Clinical Trials group, by his role in the establishment of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance, and by his contribution to the establishment of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium.