Increasing leadership diversity in digital health in the NHS

Alex is a healthcare policy consultant with over 10 years of experience in service design and deployment and adoption of digital health innovations, evidence-based policymaking, and strategic partnership building. Her mission is to leverage the potential of digital technologies to foster collaborative cultures, optimise patient outcomes, and drive healthcare transformation.

Recently, Alex served as the Outreach and Engagement Director at NGH Automation Accelerator, a leading organisation that supports the development and scaling of robotic process automation across the NHS. In this role, she facilitated effective partnerships for digital health. Alex has also worked on supporting digital innovations finding a complaint route to market as a Health Tech Policy Advisor in the Digital & IT Category Team at NHS Shared Business Services, where her focus was to engage with suppliers and NHS organisations. Since 2020, she co-leads the One Health Tech Manchester Hub advocating for diversity and inclusion in health tech.

Managing Director of Evolutions Public Sector business with a focus on the NHS, Bernadette runs teams of consultants nationally who deliver interim digital talent to NHS organisations. This is both via Outcome Based Solution models as well as a contingent model. She is an organiser of Her Plus Data Meet Up in Manchester, a female-only women-in-data meet-up group that works with the female data community in the North West to empower, mentor, and support women with a passion for data and more broadly technology-focused work. Bernadette is also a mentor for WIR – Women in Recruitment. She has worked in the recruitment sector since 2005. Managing the delivery of talent to a variety of organisations from one or two contractors right through to complex large-scale projects. Her experience straddles both the Private and Public Sectors, the last two years being solely NHS organisations. She is the Co-Curator for One Health Tech Manchester.

Dr Paul Rice joined Bradford and Airedale NHS Foundation Trusts from his role as Regional Director of Digital Transformation for NHS England and NHS Improvement in the North East and Yorkshire. He leads on the delivery of digital programmes across both organisations and at Place within our Act as One Programme. This work includes driving forward Airedale’s ambition as a Digital Aspirant to secure an enterprise wide Electronic Patient Record, updating and improving the Infrastructure, Networks and Cyber resilience of both organisations, and leading major digital system upgrades including Laboratory Imaging Systems.

He is committed to programmes of inclusive digital transformation and passionate about diversifying the skills base and creating professional career opportunities for current and future digital and data workforces. He is also a firm believer in information technology being a means to an end not an end in itself.

I am the Chief Digital and Infrastructure Officer at Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust. Prior to this, I held the role of Deputy Director for Quality, Innovation and Improvement and CIO for the North West Ambulance Service. I am passionate about transforming health and care for all people by harnessing technology, data and estates, using a methodologically driven approach to improve the way we deliver services. I am a big advocate for clinical leadership and co-design with patients, providing the space for staff, patients and technical teams to work together to generate and test ideas.

I have a unique understanding and combined experience of digital, estates, mental health, improvement and NHS regulatory requirements over my 20 years in the NHS. I have worked nationally, regionally and for providers. I have worked alongside some of the world’s leading healthcare improvers and thought leaders and developed partnerships with industry, academia and health and social care to deliver change. I am passionate about leading teams to deliver standards and governance ensuring safety and security whilst enabling change and doing this thorough collaboration and partnerships where we bring people together to deliver on shared goals.

At LSCFT I have Executive responsibility for Digital and Estates. For 4 years prior I was the CIO at NWAS where we were able to significantly improve our digital maturity, taking us from negative outliers to leaders in the ambulance sector rapidly improving our infrastructure and enabling digital innovation underpinned by improvement methods.

Before NWAS I spent 10 years working in improvement and innovation in Salford. During this time I worked regionally and nationally to deliver national measurement systems, large scale change programmes and provide support to teams testing innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges across the NHS.

Dr Rizwan Malik is a leading radiologist with an interest in health tech, digital imaging, and the potential of AI to support clinicians and patients.

Rizwan studied medicine in Cambridge and London before qualifying as a radiologist. He joined what is now Bolton NHS Foundation Trust in 2006 and has held a number of increasingly senior roles at the organisation, where he became divisional medical director in 2020.

Alongside his career in radiology, he has been a clinical advisor to leading imaging suppliers, and is managing director of South Manchester Radiology, a consultancy that advises the health service and vendors on transformation and innovation, with a focus on imaging and AI.

He is the immediate Past-President of UKIO – the largest Imaging and Oncology conference in the UK – where he worked to diversify the range of presentations and engage the supplier community in shared learning activities.

Rizwan says his priority is to see healthcare make similar gains in the future. “Both the healthcare system and its suppliers need to be asking: how can we go further?” he says.

In addition to being a Shuri Network Steering Group Member, Rafiah is the Chief Digital Ethics and Assurance Officer at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust which supports individuals with mental health and/or learning needs. This is the first role of its kind in the NHS and has the remit of ensuring best practice in health and care through digital safety, privacy, security and accessibility. By considering both legislative and moral duty, Rafiah is responsible for assuring the highest quality of digital and data solutions for NHS staff and service users.

Rafiah is also a clinical doctoral fellow funded by the National Institute of Health Research who invest in innovative projects led by NHS clinicians. As an NIHR fellow, she utilises almost two decades of knowledge and experience as a Paediatric Speech and Language Therapist to work with children who have language disorder and co-design evidence-based digital therapy tools. The fellowship involves collaboration between St George’s University Hospital Foundation Trust and City, University of London.