Ian Williams named the area of study called Graphic Medicine, founding the Graphic Medicine website in 2007, which he currently edits with MK Czerwiec. He is a comics artist, writer and physician, based in Brighton. His graphic novel, The Bad Doctor, was published in the UK by Myriad Editions, in North America by Penn State University Press and in France by Marabout. It was shortlisted for the Medicine Unboxed Creative Prize 2015, highly commended in the BMA Book Awards 2015, and was included as one of the 40 works in The Great British Graphic Novel exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London. He is currently working on his second graphic novel, The Lady Doctor, under a contract from the same publishers.

Williams studied Fine Art after medical school and then became involved in the Medical Humanities movement. He is co-author of The Graphic Medicine Manifesto, also from Penn State University Press, which was nominated for an Eisner Award. He has been the recipient of several grants and has contributed to numerous medical, humanities, and comics publications. He drew a weekly comic strip, Sick Notes, for The Guardian newspaper, and currently contributes cartoons to Pulse magazine.