Professor Sharkey is an academic neonatologist with a broad research portfolio. His research focus is in healthcare technology for babies and children. In particular, Prof. Sharkey is involved with medical device development in the fields of neonatal resuscitation, neonatal monitoring and diagnostics, automated early warning score systems incorporating electronic assessment of capillary refill, and also medical App development. His other main research focus related to inter-hospital transport of neonatal patients and the stress, vibration, noise and safety aspects of this.

Prof. Sharkey is the lead clinical investigator on a number of healthcare technology studies, including HeartLight (newborn resuscitation), DoppCord (newborn transition at the point of cord clamping), Preterm infant transport stress (PremiTranS) study, Gestational assessment tool (GestATion Study), Neonatal perfusion monitoring using laser speckle imaging (NeoPerf) and paediatric continuous early warning system (PRefill Study).

In addition to these, his team are involved in developing models for neonatal transport stress and the utility of near infra-red spectroscopy in a variety of neonatal settings.