From 1996 to April 2005, Aylward was Chief Medical Adviser, Medical Director and Chief Scientist of the UK
Department for Work and Pensions and Chief Medical Adviser and Head of Profession at the Veteran's Agency,
Ministry of Defence. He was on the board of the
Benefits Agency Medical Service in the 1990s. Aylward's wife, Angela, was then involved in setting up a company called Mediprobe, trading under the name Nationwide Medical Examination Advisory Service Ltd, which arranged for the agency's doctors to work for insurance companies. Aylward was involved in the establishment of the new
Work Capability Assessment test. When he left the department he headed the
UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research, at Cardiff University. Aylward was criticised for what was a biomedical model of psychosocial worklessness; although he called it a
biopsychosocial model, it was clearly distinct from any such model. Qualified only as a physician, his lack of any professional qualifications as a scientist was problematic to an academic career in applied science, in addition to the financial influence of
UNUM, an American insurance-company of poor reputation for illegal withholding of disability-insurance payments and which funded his academic unit. His model was said to be the basis of the
Cameron government’s disability benefits crackdown and the intensification of a hostile environment towards disabled people. Aylward was Chair of the advisory board of HCB Group, a provider of rehabilitation and case management services to insurance companies and the corporate sector. Aylward was also Chair of
Life Sciences Hub Wales from 2017 to 2021. He remained on the Board of Directors. ==Publications==