Dr. Carpenter is emeritus professor of human aging at the Centre for Health Service Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, and until May 2008 was a consultant physician at the East Kent Hospitals Trust, Canterbury. He is associate director of the Health Informatics Unit of the Royal College of Physicians.

His research and publications have included screening the elderly in the community, evaluations of Community and Nursing Home Care Services in Europe, resource use case mix for the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care, NHS funding and quality of care of Nursing Homes residents, cross-national research and comparisons of nursing home care, and the evaluation of intermediate care, and standards for clinical records. He led the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) review of the Safety of Older People in Sweden in the OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies. At the Health Informatics Unit he leads the program developing professional evidence and consensus-based standards for the structure and content of clinical records. These standards, developed with widespread stakeholder engagement, are having an impact across the professional, educational, and regulatory organizations of the NHS. They constitute a major advance addressing the challenges of interoperability for electronic health records.