Liz Ashall-Payne
CEO and Co-Founder, ORCHA
Liz founded ORCHA in 2015, determined to offer necessary guidance to app developers to help raise app quality, and help the public and professionals to confidently find and apply apps to improve health outcomes. Initially a Speech and Language Therapist, Liz has almost 20 years’ NHS experience. She has led innovative change in complex health economies. Through working collaboratively within the Public Sector, Industry and Academia, she has led regional, national and European change programmes and networks to deliver transformational shift.
Dr Raghib Ali
Chief Medical Officer, Our Future Health
Markus Bolton
Executive Director, Graphnet Health
Markus co-founded System C in 1983 and has almost 40 years’ experience as a director of IT companies. He took System C into the healthcare market in 1993, and has specialised in health and social care software ever since.
As joint CEO of System C, Markus has had overall responsibility for all areas of the business over the years. He currently leads on business strategy, sales, customer and partner relationships and finance.
Markus is also a director and major shareholder of Graphnet Health – the market leader in integrated care record and population health solutions for ICSs.
Dr Nicola Byrne
National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care
Dr Nicola Byrne is the National Data Guardian for health and adult social care in England, having been appointed to the role in March 2021 by Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
Dr Byrne has a 20 year background working in mental health, and retains her clinical role as a consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Prior to becoming National Data Guardian, she held positions as the trust’s Deputy Medical Director, Caldicott Guardian and Chief Clinical Information Officer.
Dr Minal Bakhai
Director of Primary Care Transformation, NHS England
Dr Minal Bakhai is the Director of Primary Care Transformation at NHS England. She is a practicing GP, working at an inner-city London practice for over 12 years.
Minal has a unique portfolio with experience stretching across policy, national programme strategy, research and implementation. Additionally, she is an expert advisor at NICE appraising the effectiveness and safety of digital tools used in primary care to reduce preventable ill health and empower patients.
She is passionate about harnessing the power of technology to support the delivery of a vibrant, high quality, sustainable general practice and developing a shared learning system to ensure the use of digital tools meet the challenges of our population.
Beverley Bryant
Chief Digital Information Officer, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT & Kings College Hospital NHS FT
Beverley is Chief Digital Information Officer at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts, a dual board-level role.
Previously, she has held various roles in the NHS and in industry including as Director of Digital Technology at NHS England, leading national initiatives including Tech Funds and Patient Online post the NPfIT era. She led the creation of NHS Choices in 2007, whilst Chief Information Officer at DH.
Beverley is also Founding Ambassador of One HealthTech, a network that promotes diversity in health technology skills in the UK.
Helen Balsdon
Acting CNIO, NHS England
Helen’s work seeks to ensure that nursing practice is supported by digital technology and data science and that nurses are equipped to work and lead in an digitally enabled environment. Helen is also responsible for the digital clinical safety strategy and interoperable medicines programme.
Prior to joining the team, Helen was CNIO/Head of Nursing at Cambridge University Hospitals. This was a strategic role working across the organisation providing clinical leadership for all aspects of informatics including adoption and use of new ways of working using technology.
Helen is passionate about using technology to support the delivery of high quality, evidence-based care and empowering patients in managing their own health record.
Saffron Cordery
Interim Chief Executive, NHS Providers
Saffron is NHS Providers deputy chief executive, and part of the senior management team. She has experience in policy development, influencing and communications and has worked in the healthcare sector since 2007. Before moving into healthcare, Saffron was head of public affairs at the Local Government Association, the voice of local councils in England. Her early career focused on influencing EU legislation and policy development, and she started working life in adult and community education.
Dom Cushnan
Director of AI, Imaging and Deployment, NHS England
Dominic Cushnan joined the NHS in 2014 and is currently Head of AI Imaging for the NHS AI Lab.
Dominic previously founded a technology company specialising in computer vision and human interface technologies.
Since his appointment in the NHS AI Lab, January 2020, he has developed an AI Buyers’ Guide for healthcare and developed the National Covid-19 Chest Imaging Database for the training and testing of AI models. Dom is a keen advocate of the safe and ethical adoption of AI.
Jacqui Cooper
CNIO, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
I am a registered nurse with a clinical background in neonatal nursing. My positions have been staff nurse, ward manager and matron through to the role of Chief Nursing Informatics Officer. I have been a CNIO in 3 organisations over the last 8 years, working with varied providers and supporting 3 go lives. I am involved in regional and national groups supporting the digital nursing profile. I am passionate about ensuring nurses have an equal voice in the digital arena to ensure that information systems support nursing and allow more time for patient care, thereby reducing risk and improving quality and safety.
In currently work at Manchester Foundation Trust as Group Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, leading the digital programme for nurses locally, regionally and at national level. I am responsible for strategic and operational nursing leadership in the development, deployment, re-engineering, optimisation and integration of clinical information systems to support nursing and patient care.
Cori Crider
Co-Founder and Co-Director, Foxglove
Cori Crider co-directs Foxglove, a legal non-profit founded to make the use of technology fair. Foxglove won the UK’s first legal challenges to abusive government algorithms, used in migration and student grading. They are involved in litigation against Facebook in Kenya, and have brought several legal challenges to preserve trust and consent in the use of NHS patient data. She was previously a Director at Reprieve, where she represented drone strike victims and Guantánamo detainees.
Tara Donnelly
Founder, Digital Care
Following a 30 year career in the NHS, including two Chief Executive roles and as Chief Digital Officer for the NHS, Tara established Digital Care recently to help fuel the digital health revolution.
She has a particular passion for advancing digital home care, given the huge benefits to patients, carers and the NHS alike, and consider the opportunities to be significant, thanks to the development of great digital solutions and the increasing impact being achieved, and will be working with selected NHS, digital health innovator and private sector partners, in the UK and beyond, to drive up scale and help these great ideas reach more people.
Konrad Dobschuetz
National Director & Chief Enterprise Officer, NHS Innovation Accelerator & UCLP
Konrad is National Director of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) program which supports exceptional individuals to scale best in class innovations across NHSE for patient and staff benefit. He is also the Chief Enterprise Officer for UCL Partners, an NHSE ASHN, driving the innovation pipeline, adoption readiness of mainly digital health solutions, industry engagement and working with universities. He is working with key NHS leaders in both roles. Prior, Konrad worked for Novartis and Pfizer, driving large scale digital transformation projects across global markets.
Prof Ruth Endacott
Director of Nursing & Midwifery, National Institute for Health Research
Professor Ruth Endacott was appointed inaugural Director of Nursing and Midwifery at the National Institute for Heath and Care Research (NIHR) in May 2021.
In this newly created post, Ruth has responsibility for providing professional leadership for nurses and midwives who are supporting, delivering or leading research, promoting nursing and midwifery within the NIHR and beyond, and encouraging more professionals to become involved in research. Ruth is Emeritus Professor at Monash University, Melbourne and Trustee/Director at the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC).
Dr Tim Ferris
Director of Transformation, NHS England
Dr Tim Ferris is the inaugural National Director of Transformation at NHS England and NHS Improvement and previously a Non-Executive Director on the Board. Tim was most recently CEO of the Mass General Physicians Organization (2017-2021) and was formerly the Senior Vice President for Population Health at Mass General Brigham overseeing performance for one of the largest accountable care organizations in the US. He founded the Center for Population Health, which reaches over one million patients annually, focusing on prevention and data to improve health, reduce inequities and save lives.
Tim trained in medicine and public health at Harvard University, and remains on the staff of Mass General. He was awarded numerous NIH and foundation grants and co-authored over 130 publications on health care quality measurement, health disparities and health IT. Tim became a professor at Harvard Medical School in 2018 and continues as an adjunct Professor.
Mike Fell
Executive Director of National Cyber Security Operations, NHS Digital
Mike has spent 15 years in range of security roles for the UK Government, and is currently Executive Director of National Cyber Operations for NHS Digital, with accountability for the security of NHS Digital’s data and systems, as well as supporting the resilience of the wider Health System in defending and respond to cyber attacks.
Prior to this, Mike spent six years as the Head of Cyber Security Operations and Deputy Chief Security Officer for HMRC. Previous roles have included leading HMRC’s anti-phishing efforts, work with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in Afghanistan, helping to secure the 2012 Olympic & Paralympics and voluntary work to help others protect themselves from cyber threats.
Andrew Griffiths
CEO, FEDIP
Andrew is the CEO of the Federation for Informatics Professionals in health and care (FEDIP).
FEDIP was established by the professional bodies, with the dual-core purposes of Voluntary registration/regulation and Developing the Health and Care Informatics profession.
Andrew was the CIO for NHS Wales for over ten years having previously been instrumental in establishing a national organisation to develop and implement the Welsh digital strategy – Informing healthcare. He began his career in the NHS after graduating with a degree in computing unaware that the NHS needed technology people, after completing the general management scheme he returned to managing technology services in acute and mental health services along with a period working for the private sector.
Lesley Holdsworth
Clinical Lead (CCIO) for Digital Health and Care, Scottish Government
Lesley is the Scottish Government’s Clinical Lead for Digital Health & Care. She has had a lifelong interest in informatics and particularly its criticality in driving improvement and is passionate about developing a digitally enabled workforce. Lesley is currently leading a number of national, UK and global digital initiatives establishing standards for digital practice and strategy and workforce development. She is also a council member and Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.
She is also Chair of the Board of Bield, the largest Housing Association in Scotland. In 2018, she was named Scottish Digital Impact Leader and Digital Health’s UK Digital Team Leader of the year.
Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt
Chair, NHS Norfolk & Waveney Integrated Care Board
Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt has been independent chair of the NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board since July 2022 and was previously chair of the Norfolk & Waveney ICS/STP. From 2005 to 2007, Patricia was Secretary of State for Health in the Blair Government, introducing the smoke-free legislation, establishing the NHS Choices website (www.nhs.uk) and creating a ground-breaking public consultation – Our Health, Our Care, Our Say – that anticipated many of the themes of the Five Year Forward View.
Patricia has a long-standing interest in digital transformation of healthcare and until 2021 was a member of the advisory board of the digital healthcare firm, Medefer. As chair of the UK India Business Council from 2010 to 2018, she helped build partnerships between the two countries in healthcare and other sectors, and retains her interest in India as chair of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development.
Australian by birth, Patricia came to Britain as a student, graduating from Newnham College, Cambridge. She lives in Norfolk; in her spare time, she is an enthusiastic gardener, active in her village community and loves walking and running (very slowly). She has a daughter in London and a son in Sydney.
Phil Huggins
National Chief Information Security Officer for Health & Care, NHS England
Phil is a proven security leader currently employed as a Senior Civil Servant with over 24 years of experience in security and technology roles. Phil has designed and operated security for critical national infrastructure and sensitive government. Phil has advised and managed global financial services organisations and advised national regulators on cyber resilience and cybersecurity.
As National CISO for Health and Social Care Phil sets system strategy and architecture for the Health & Social Care system including the NHS, as well as DHSC and it’s ALBs and more than 20,000 social care providers. He also acts as the NIS regulator for operators of essential services in Health & Social Care.
Jon Hoeksma
CEO, Digital Health
Jon is the founder and CEO of Digital Health, the health IT B2B news, research and events publisher and professional networks specialist. He previously co-founded and edited eHealth Insider, and is a leading journalist, commentator and thought leader on UK health IT.
In 2014 he led the trade sale of eHealth insider to Informa PLC. Achievements of note include: founding the UK CCIO movement, from launch of CCIO campaign in 2011 to development and growth of CCIO Networks and community; the development of Digital Health Networks – centred on CCIO and CIO Networks – as the leading independent online best practice community of NHS IT professionals – 5,000+ members as of November 2020; plus growing Digital Health Summer Schools into the premier health IT leadership event in UK; and launching Digital Health Rewired in March 2019 as the most dynamic and compelling Expo in digital health space.
Daniel Jeffery
Deputy Chief Information Officer & Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Digital Data and Technology Services NHS Blood and Transplant
Dan is a proven technology and Cyber Security leader across Health and Care and is currently the Chief Information Security Officer and Deputy CIO for NHSBT. Dan is accountable for the secure design, delivery, and operational running of the technology and infrastructure that underpins the NHS’ Blood, Organ, Tissue, and Plasma services. Prior to NHSBT, Dan ran the national cyber programme for the Health and Care system at NHS Digital.
Pippa McCabe
Chief Allied Health Professional Information Officer (CAHPIO), South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, NI
Pippa McCabe is a physiotherapist by background with 20 years’ experience across a range of acute, community and clinical leadership roles. She is currently the CAHPIO for 1 of the 5 Health and Social Care Trusts in NI that are implementing their Epic EPR ‘encompass’ across the country. Pippa is a member of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, has a PGCert in Medicines Management and recently completed a PGDip in Digital Health Leadership (Cohort 4).
Yinka Makinde
Director of Digital Workforce, NHS England
Yinka combines a career in Pharmacy, Digital Transformation, Entrepreneurship, and an unrelenting passion to prevent illness through the adoption of technology. She is driven by impact and legacy.
Over the course of her 27-year career, Yinka has worked for Accenture, CSC, GlaxoSmithKline, Singapore General Hospital, and multiple NHS organisations across the UK leading digital transformation and care delivery. She is currently Director of Digital Workforce Strategy for NHSx.
Yinka recently took on the role of Director of Digital Workforce at NHSEI. Previously serving as Head of Innovation at NHSx and as Programme Director at DigitalHealth.London, she grew London’s position as a global commercial destination for digital health innovation, through programmes that supported payors and digital health suppliers. Prior to that Yinka as an entrepreneur founded and led the commercialisation of a tech start-up Vitalfootprint.
Yinka has been featured in the media including the Guardian; National Health Executive; Tech City News, and is a regular speaker at industry events. Yinka sits on the Smart London Board and the London Child Obesity Taskforce, and until recently was a Trustee of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.
Cate McLaurin
Director, Public Digital
Cate is a globally renowned digital transformation leader with deep experience of delivering agile, user-centred services and capabilities in public services. She has designed and led digital programmes from scratch, and worked with senior leadership teams to rethink and reimagine delivery culture and ways of working.
Cate has senior experience across both local and central government, including as Head of Delivery at the London Borough of Hackney, a role she held through both the pandemic and responding to a cyber attack. As Director of Digital Innovation at Acas, she built their first digital team, helping the conciliation service adopt user centred, agile ways of working.
DR Natasha Phillips
Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO), NHS England
Dr Natasha Phillips is a clinical academic; a nurse who started her career as a nursing assistant at the North London Hospice before going on to train at Middlesex University. She went on to follow a career in critical care nursing and obtained a BSc Critical Care Nursing from King’s College London. Natasha has held a number of operational and strategic leadership positions in the NHS. She has led a large number of transformational programmes of change involving the use of digital technologies and informatics; most recently the implementation of an enterprise wide electronic health record at University College London.
Rahul Singal
Associate CCIO for Medicines, NHS England
Rahul is currently the Associate CCIO for Medicines at NHSE, where he holds SRO accountability for the Digital and Interoperable Medicines Programme. As the designated Chief Pharmaceutical Officer lead for any national digital improvement programmes, Rahul holds the responsibility for any specific medicines related work and will also provide professional leadership for the pharmacy informatics workforce and related workforce development.
Rahul has held several leadership positions across NHS organisations and ALBs, most recently he was the Chief Pharmacist at NELFT. He has been involved in digital projects that include the deployment of; hospital-based medicines automation, EPMA, EPS2, E-Job Planning and working with partners to define pharmacy and medicines related performance metrics. Rahul is also Health Foundation Generation Q Fellow.
Richard Stubbs
CEO,
Yorkshire & Humber AHSN
Richard Stubbs is a leading health innovation expert with an NHS career spanning 20 years. As CEO of the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network, an organisation which sits between the NHS and healthcare to promote technology and innovation which benefits both patients and the NHS, and through this and varied non-executive and voluntary roles. Richard is driving innovation and system transformation in the health sector, contributing to economic growth and improving outcomes for patients.
Prof Laura Serrant
Regional Head of Nursing, NE, Yorks & Humber Health Education England
Professor Laura Serrant OBE is Regional Lead Nurse for Health Education England (North East and Yorkshire) and Professor of Community and Public Health Nursing at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Professor Serrant has an extensive experience in national and international health policy development with particular specialist input on racial and ethnic inequalities and cultural safety.
It was her work in this area which led to her being awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2018 for services to Health Policy. She is listed 8th in the top 100 most influential Black people in the UK by the Powerlist UK. In 2021 she received the Nursing Times Lifetime achievement award for services to Nursing by the 4 UK countries Chief Nursing Officers.
Haris Shuaib
Consultant Physicist, Head of Clinical Scientific Computing, Guy’s & St Thomas NHS FT
Haris Shuaib is a Consultant Clinical Scientist and Head of the Clinical Scientific Computing section at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, where his team are developing people, platforms, and policy for digital health.
He is also the AI Transformation Lead at the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare where he oversees the development of AI prototypes across over 20 patient pathways in partnership with academia, industry and NHS Trusts. He is also the inventor and technical lead of the AI Deployment Engine, a platform which seeks to make integration of AI software into clinical pathways safe and efficient.
Finally, he also holds a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship, where he is leading a national multi-centre trial to see whether AI can improve the treatment of glioblastoma.
Sarah Thompson
CCIO (Pharmacy and Medicines), Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS FT
Sarah is a Pharmacist and CCIO at Wirral University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Nominated by the Pharmaceutical Journal as a ‘Woman to Watch 2022’ Sarah is proud to be one of the first Pharmacist CCIO’s nationally.
A passionate advocate for career development for non-medical CCIOs, Sarah is determined to see further representation from Pharmacy, AHP, Nursing and Midwifery colleagues nationally. Sarah’s main areas of interest include clinical engagement, clinical safety, & optimisation of digital systems.
Helen Thomas
CEO, Digital Health & Care Wales
Helen was appointed as the CEO of Digital Health & Care Wales in 2021, having spent the previous year as the Interim Director of the NHS Wales Informatics Service, leading the organisation’s impressive response to the Covid-19 pandemic, supporting the NHS in Wales to adopt data and digital advances at pace and scale, whilst at the same time leading the organisation as it transitioned to a Special Health Authority on 1st April 2021. She joined the NHS Wales Informatics Service as Director of Information in 2017 and has been instrumental in supporting the improved quality and use of data in healthcare and the development of the new National Data Resource – the NDR.
Previously, she was the Assistant Director of Information at Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Board, with responsibility for setting the strategic direction for data and digital and providing the information needed to evaluate service delivery and to support service improvement and transformation. Helen began her career in the NHS over 30 years ago, initially working in finance, moving into health information in 2000, gaining wide health informatics experience across a number of senior roles over the last 20 years. Helen has an MSc in Health Informatics from Swansea University and is a leading practitioner of the Federation of Informatics Professionals, a fellow of the British Computer Society and a Professor of Practice at University of Wales Trinity St David.
Helen was named DigitalHealth Digital NHS CEO of the year 2022.
Peter Thomas
CCIO, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Peter Thomas is the Chief Clinical Information Officer and Director of Digital Medicine at Moorfields Eye Hospitals. His primary interest is in digital transformation of clinical care, and creation of a hospital environment that can embed and sustain technologically enabled and automated services. To achieve this, he has recently founded the UK’s first Department of Digital Medicine. In 2022 he was named as “CCIO of the year” in the annual Digital Health Awards. By clinical training he is a paediatric ophthalmologist.
Prof Greta Westwood
Chief Executive Officer, Florence Nightingale Foundation
Greta has been the CEO of the Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) since September 2019 but joined the FNF as the Chief Operating Officer in 2017. She is a Registered Nurse and a Florence Nightingale Foundation Alumna (2012 Leadership Scholar).
Greta qualified as a nurse in 1983 and a midwife in 1987. She completed a PhD in Nursing in 2010. Greta’ career has spanned general nursing, midwifery, clinical genetics, and clinical academic roles.
In 2021, Greta was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List 2021 for services to Nursing and Midwifery.
Cris Amankwah
Southwark Council
15 years of programme and project management consulting experience across public sector bodies including Central and local Government, Home Office, and NHS, Cris has successfully delivered various bespoke programmes including 2012 London Olympic Planning and NHS Better Care Together programmes.
Cris is currently working on behalf of Southwark Council’s Public Health Team delivering NHS Digital Health Check programme to ensure Southwark residents have access to an
NHS Digital Health Check Project. This is a preventative measure to identify early signs of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 Diabetes and provide onward support, guidance, and referrals to appropriate clinical treatment.
Alastair Allen
Chief Technology Officer, Better
I’m an experienced technology leader with a proven track record of leading strategy, design and development of large transformational services and products.
I have worked in various roles, including software engineer, technology consultant, architect, product manager, and CTO. As a result, I have a breadth of technology, business and people skills with a proven track record of leading large, diverse and distributed teams through major transformational programs within highly competitive, technically challenging and fast-paced environments.
I was a founding member of Evolve, Kainos’ flagship healthcare product. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I supported the NHS’s response through my work on COVID-19 Testing, Contact Tracing and Vaccinations.
In my current position as Chief Technology Officer for Better, I am accountable for technology innovation, strategy and leadership for Better’s suite of platforms, tools and applications.
I believe there is a better, more collaborative way to deliver digital health. I’m passionate about using technology to make it easier for healthcare professionals to help people live longer, healthier lives.
You can read more about my thoughts on Medium at Alastair Allen – Medium
Dr Lia Ali
Clinical Advisor, Transformation Directorate, NHS England
Dr Lia Ali is a doctor and digital health strategist with extensive experience across the spectrum of digital healthcare. She is passionate about ethics and safety by design, patient centred care and long term conditions including mental health and have particular interests in integrated care and medical education. She believes that delivery of exemplary healthcare requires a holistic, biopsychosocial, service design approach. Lia has done this via transformation roles in the NHS, charities & for-profit sector.
Sarah Amani
Chief Nursing Information Officer, Dorset HealthCare University NHS FT
Sarah Amani is a mental health nurse and clinical manager with 18 years’ experience of leading transformation programmes across teams and organisations, with a focus on working collaboratively with people who use services and staff to improve their experience and outcomes. Sarah is currently working as Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO) at Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust and has previously worked as Senior Programme Manager for NHS England (South). Her programmes of work have previously been highly commended by the HSJ for ‘Innovation in Mental Health’, E-Health Insider for ‘Excellence in Mobile Health Technology’ and NHS Leadership Academy for ‘Digital Health Champion of The Year’. When she is not working, Sarah enjoys travelling and aerial photography using recreational drones.
Anna Awoliyi
CNIO Nursing and AHP, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust
Anna Awoliyi currently works in Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals as a CNIO Nursing and Allied Health, currently working on the EPR, Digital champions with a keen focus on staff digital literacy and development. She began her digital journey at Kettering General Hospital (KGH) in 2017 as a Transformation Programme Manager where her team was presented with an innovation award from NHS Improvement. Anna was the Finalist for the CNIO of the year 2021. Anna has also featured in The Nursing Times on current technology and healthcare topics.
In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, she implemented virtual visiting, which is an electronic system for patients to speak with their loved ones via video using a computer or tablet.
The Digital Director at Kettering General Hospital stated, “We are very proud and inspired by all the work that Anna has done on the virtual visiting project. She has been fundamental in virtual visiting being delivered and developed and it was her passion and enthusiasm that helped get this embedded on the wards at the height of the Covid Pandemic. This is a great example of a how a digital solution can help to aid and support our patients and their families during these difficult times”.
Anna claimed top spot in the “digital champion” section of the BAME Health and Care Awards 2021, which recognises the contribution.
Finally, Anna has a keen interest in digital inequalities and hopes to continue to advocate for patients and staff voices.
João Bastos da Fonseca
Modern Matron Critical Care & Head of Clinical Site Management, Capacity & Nursing Workforce planning, Cromwell Hospital
For the last three years João has been leading the digital transformation in the intensive care unit with the implementation of a new electronic patient record, a digital patient feedback solution and the optimisation of daily processes using digital channels.
João is passionate about designing data driven solutions that improve patient experiences and safety. Recently João developed dynamic establishment tools for all the nursing division based on safe staffing models, to support appropriate recruitment of staff, identification of workforce gaps and guarantee the right people, with the right skills, in the right place at the right time.
Oliver Barnes
Programme Director, Adoption and Spread, Health Innovation Manchester
He has strategic oversight and leads on delivery of nationally commissioned programmes as part of the national Academic Health Science Network, including the National Innovation Collaborative for digital health, National Patient Safety Collaborative and affiliated local programmes.
Oliver is an NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur and has a specialist interest in global health, working and learning together with colleagues from other countries as part of the very first MSc Global Healthcare Leadership cohort delivered by Keele University Medical School, co designed with the Business School MBA and Health Education England.
David Byrne
ODN Manager, NHS Cheshire & Merseyside
David Byrne is the Cheshire and Merseyside Hepatitis Operational Delivery Network Manager , where he has extensive experience in managing hepatitis and Liver services and currently works out of the Royal Liverpool Hospital hub site and mangers the surrounding Cheshire and Mersey network and all of its workstreams. He has worked in the National Health Service for 7 years before that he worked in investment banking for 8 years. He has a keen interest in data and analytics and how this can be used to facilitate pathways by NHS staff on the frontline to directly benefit patients. David also works with the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board on its Alcohol Prevention Program working with clinicians on regional dashboards and nurse education programs.
Darrien Bold
Head of Stroke Programme, NHS England
Neil Bacon
Principle and Lead: EMEA Health and Public Sector; Adobe Digital Strategy Group
During his time working with Health and Public Sector, he has been a key player in the expansion of G Cloud, led user sessions to redesign CCS frameworks, the alignment of security classifications across Public Sector to assist sharing of information and commonality of language, a member of the Government’s PSN Board, co-writer of the paper that led to the current design of HSCN, part of the HR and Finance Global Principles project including Metis.
In his spare time, Neil has run Charities and Health organisations focussed on delivering help and care running services like Healthwatch and Signposting services on behalf of the NHS. Neil has seen first-hand the value that data can bring to the elderly and vulnerable, especially when it’s symbiotically joining human and digital services for example AI or experience driven technology. When not working Neil can often be found Sailing with his family.
Neil’s background includes a blend of Leadership and Consulting. Neil is proud to work in Adobe’s Digital Strategy Group (DSG), which is the Adobe in house strategy group and leads much of the DSG work in Public Sector and Health around Data Driven Operating Models and value-based execution. He has also held senior roles in PwC and Accenture.
Dr Mark Bailey
Locum doctor, Chair of Council for the Faculty of Clinical Informatics and Clinician-who-codes
Mark Bailey is passionate about digital innovation, better patient care and improved staff workflows. As a Clinician-who-codes, he has built several digital systems to improve the delivery of healthcare at both Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. As the newly appointed interim Chair of Council for the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, Mark is eager to improve digital healthcare across the NHS.
Fran Beadle
Chief Nursing Information Officer, Digital Health and Care Wales, NHS Wales
Fran is employed by Digital Health and Care Wales advising on the standardisation and digitalisation of nursing documentation across Wales supporting the delivery of a “Once for Wales” electronic health record collaborating with government and national nursing leaders. Leading to NHS Wales winning the Nursing Times award for Technology and Data in Nursing, 2020 and Winners of BCS Leading Health Care project 2021.
Fran holds a MSc in Health Informatics alongside her Registered Nurse qualification, chairs the British Computer Society specialist nursing committee, in addition to representing Wales on the Five Nations Digital Nursing and Midwifery Leadership Group.
Emma Beardsmore
Senior Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Badger Health Group
My name is Emma Beardsmore I am an Advanced Clinical Practitioner for Badger Medical and Urgent Care provider in Birmingham. I am also a Clinical Lead for Badger responsible for training and education of the workforce in particularly using the Ummanu Software. We use Ummanu in conjunction with Adastra so my role is to ensure all clinicians understand how the systems work and are comfortable using them for their role in our out of hours call centre. I also work as a clinician in this role speaking with and remotely assessing patients who have contacted NHS 111 during the out of hours period. I joined badger during the Covid-19 pandemic where we were providing care at the Birmingham Nightingale setup, I was training as an ACP at this time. I love working in Urgent Care and the challenges it brings, since using the Ummanu system I have broadened my knowledge and vastly increased my competencies in all areas of illness.
Michael Beckett
CDIO, Medway NHS FT
Victoria Betton
Associate, Author, Podcaster and Public Speaker
specialises in human-centred design, digital strategy and adoption which she
delivers through her company, PeopleDotCom Ltd.
Victoria is a qualified social worker and coach with 20+ year’s experience in local government, third sector, digital health startups and the
NHS. Her latest book, Towards a Digital Health Ecology – NHS Digital Adoption through the COVID-19 Looking Glass is her latest book (Routledge, 2022)
Claire Bevan
Claire retired as the Executive Director of Nursing & Quality in the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust in December 2019. A Registered General Nurse with 41 years` of experience working across Health Boards and Trusts in NHS Wales in senior professional leadership and management roles. Extensive experience with a wide range of services, clinical specialities and corporate functions (resource management, workforce and strategic planning): education, audit, research & development, patient experience, patient safety, safeguarding, infection prevention & control, quality assurance and improvement.
She specialised in Cardiac Nursing (WNB); with a Diploma in Nursing, Bachelor of Nursing Degree and Msc in Leadership for Health Services Improvement (Birmingham University). Claire is an active Executive Coach and Mentor (level 7) and NLP Practitioner.
Claire is the Senior Responsible Owner for the digitalisation of nursing documentation project in NHS Wales – The Welsh Nursing Care Record (adult). This important programme of work is informing the development of the electronic patient record. She has continued to support and represent the NHS Wales Directors of Nursing & Midwifery leading and engaging with the digital priorities within their work plan. Claire works collaboratively, focusing on applying quality and standards to improve patient, carer and staff experiences, using information and data to drive improvements, learning and outcomes to realise the benefits of working digitally.
In addition, her personal journey involved caring for a member of her family living with her, with Alzheimer’s disease, and this led her to advocate for older people and carers. She is passionate about making the difference for older people and applying her experience as the Chair of the Audit & Risk Assurance Committee for the Older Peoples Commissioner (Wales).
In the 2022 New Year’s Honours, Claire was awarded as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) being recognised for her services to Nursing and Patient Care.
Jonathan Bevan
Digital Medicines Lead, Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust
Jonathan is the lead for digital medicines at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. He has over 16 years’ experience as a Clinical Pharmacist, in both the Private and NHS sectors. Jonathan functioned as an Oncology Pharmacist and Medicine Safety Officer for a number of years before moving ‘up north’ in 2014 to work as an informatics pharmacist. Since this time, Jonathan has gained a wide area of experience in transformational projects; utilising both data and analytics, as well as digital systems and processes, to improve patient experience and safety.
Jonathan is most enthusiastic about the importance and utilisation of data to improve patient experience and safety. Recently Jonathan gained an InnovateUK Grant to develop tools to support pharmacy processes utilising data to allow the correct professional review the most appropriate patient in a timely manner.
In addition to Jonathan’s role at Mid Yorkshire Hospital, he is also deputy chair of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics Digital Medicines Professional Interest Group, a group providing peer support for Informatic Pharmacists as well as expert views and opinions to all working in the digitisation of medicine management processes. As part of this Jonathan co-chairs the Safety and Optimisation working group of the professional interest group working to provide national advice and support in the safe optimisation of digital systems.
Jonathan is passionate about the transformational aspects of innovation with a focus on, and proven track record in, Digital Transformation and Governance.
Dr Anish Bhuva
Consultant Cardiologist, Barts Health NHS Trust; and NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Digital Health
Dr Bhuva is a Consultant Cardiologist (complex device implants, imaging), with a PhD translating machine learning for imaging into clinical use. He founded a campaign and digital health platform for half a million pacemaker patients to access cancer/stroke care. He has received >50 prizes including two gold medals for clinical work, research and NHS service development. He combines academia (BHF/NIHR funded), charities and professional networks to develop machine learning tools and electronic patient records.
Dr Sarah Blake
Cardiology Registrar, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital NHS FT
Dr Sarah Blake is a cardiology registrar at St Thomas’ Hospital, specialising in congenital heart disease and cardiac imaging. She completed her medical training in Bristol in 2012 and obtained a PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2016. She is the Women in Cardiology Representative for the BJCA and is one of the first cohort of AI clinical fellows, where she is deploying AI software to aid the interpretation of medical imaging.
Lucy Boot
Digital Midwife, UHNM
Nir Ten Bosch
CRO, Ummanu
Nir is a seasoned corporate entrepreneur with over 20 years of proven success in new business development and digital transformation delivery across Healthtech, FMCG & Energy.
As CRO of Ummanu, Nir is focused on expanding Ummanu’s technology impact to new markets, quickly establishing a significant market share in the UK.
Nir holds a Bio-Tech Engineering degree from BGU University in Israel and an MBA degree from INSEAD Singapore.
Madhukar Bose
Deputy Head of Healthcare: Digital Health, Department for International Trade
Madhukar is responsible for growing exports and investment for the UK in digital health, worldwide. He has led ground-breaking initiatives such as the Digital Health demonstrator in China, the Healthcare AI Catalyst in India and trade missions to Brazil, the USA, UAE, China and India. His management consulting experience includes working with clients such as the DHSC, the NHS, Roche, Novartis and Pfizer. He has set up a Telehealth venture in India and is an MBA alumnus of the Cranfield School of Management.
Tim Brazier
Managing Director, Thrive by Design (Part of Leeds and York NHS Trust)
In his previous role as Head of Service Design at digital and social inclusion charity Good Things Foundation, Tim led on the re-design of community spaces through the NHS Widening Digital Participation programme.
Julia Bridgewater
Julia Bridgewater, Group Deputy Chief Executive and Senior Responsible Officer for Hive Programme, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
Julia joined the NHS Graduate Training Scheme in 1984 after completing a degree in Theology at The University of Manchester.
A large part of her career has been spent within the West Midlands fulfilling the roles of Chief Executive at North Staffordshire NHS Trust (UHNS) for seven years and then Shropshire Community Trust.
Julia joined Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT) in September 2013 as the Chief Operating Officer before securing the Group Chief Operating Officer role at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) following the merger.
Most recently she has led the successful implementation of our Electronic Patient Record Programme (Hive) as Senior Responsible Officer as well as taking on the Deputy Chief Executive role
Antonia Brown
Deputy Chief Nursing Information Officer, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
Antonia Brown is a District Nurse by background, currently working as the Deputy CNIO at Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, the first community trust to become a Digital Aspirant. She chairs a national user network for the EPR in use at her Trust. She recently won an NHS Digital and Data award for Dedication to Profession, an accolade which makes her exceptionally proud as she is passionate about the professionalisation of digital nursing. She is a Queens Nurse, committed to the delivery of outstanding patient care in the community, and a Florence Nightingale Foundation Digital Alumna. She is part of Cohort 5 of the Digital Health Leadership programme. She has recently led programmes of work including the creation of a Digital Innovation Lab and creation of a Clinical Digital Innovators programme within her trust.
Lucy Brown
Director of Nursing and Midwifery Leadership Development, Florence Nightingale Foundation
Lucy started her nursing career at Guys and St Thomas’ specialising in Paediatric Intensive Care before moving to Australia where she worked in the Royal Childrens Hospital in Brisbane. While in post Lucy joined the paediatric retrieval service working alongside the Royal Flying Doctors service and also completed her MSc winning an award for her thesis on reducing the risks of barotrauma in the PICU patient. This also gained her a place with the Golden Key International Honour Society where only the top 15% of global academic students are invited to join.
Lucy joined Bupa on returning to the UK working in a numerous clinical leadership roles. Lucy designed and developed the Leading Clinical Excellence programme for Bupa receiving a global award for her work.
Lucy then went on to work for Circle Health group as a Director of Nursing supporting the NHS resilience work on the frontline.
Lucy joined the FNF in June 2021 and has overall responsibility for the delivery of the educational workstreams including the Nightingale Frontline service, Academy membership and alumni offering. Lucy’s vision for the FNF is to continue to deliver visionary and transformational leadership opportunities to continually raise the nurses and midwifery voice. This is critical to ensure we as a nursing and midwifery community have impact on patient health outcomes and population health.
Adrian Byrne
CIO, University Hospital Southampton NHSFT
Adrian is CIO at University Hospital Southampton Foundation Trust and is the chair of the national CIO Network with Digital Health, a member of the INTEROPen board, a member of the NHS electronic referral advisory board and a member of KLAS advisory board.
Adrian has spent 15 years or so pursuing a strategy for electronic patient records through integration and evolution. This has evolved into a pursuit of a multi-vendor architecture using open platforms/open data. Adrian is currently overseeing a HIMSS level 7 programme using this approach.
Paul Cameron
Account Director, Clinisys
Paul Cameron is an Account Director with over a decade of experience in Healthcare IT, the last 7 being spent with Clinisys. Paul specialises in working with NHS Trusts and Private Healthcare organisations to understand their Diagnostics Strategy and help shape how technology will play a pivotal part in achieving their goals. Away from work, Paul spends the majority of his time trying to keep up with his 10-year old son, interspersed with the odd run or cycle.
Robin Carpenter
Senior Research Data Governance Manager (AI ethics and governance lead), London Medical Imaging & Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value Based Healthcare
After witnessing how poor standards can impact patients the hardest, Robin has worked with clinicians, researchers, and patients to develop frameworks that elevate the standards of medical AI. Robin leads the governance and ethics for the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare, lectures at King’s College London on AI Law and Ethics, and is a member of the Charted Institute of IT.
Paul Charnley
Digital Lead, Healthy Wirral Partners
Prior to that, Paul transitioned from CIO at Wirral Hospital to the Digital Lead role in the Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership (now ICS) to direct a set of shared programmes. These included a Longitudinal Care Record, Population Health Management, Personal Health Records, Digital Maturity in organisations and Infrastructure and Cyber Security. These were in response to national and regional strategic objectives funded by initiatives such as the Health Service Led Investment (HSLI) which Paul helped shape as a CIO at one of the Global Digital Exemplars. During the Pandemic, Paul took on the added roles of coordinating the digital response which included the shift to remote consultation and the testing and outbreak management using a population health management system and then vaccination.
He was very pleased to be voted CIO of the year for 2021 by DigitalHealth.com and was awarded the Cyber Leaders award by NHS Digital’s Cyber Associate Network in 2022.
Anita Chinda
Assistant Director of Programmes: Frontline Digitisation, Transformation Directorate, NHS England
Anita has worked across the public sector in both England and Scotland for over two decades, in a range of senior corporate management, performance improvement, and business / digital transformation roles. She is currently leading on the setting up and deployment of a national centre of expertise, as part of NHSE’s £2Bn Frontline Digitisation programme, to support the successful implementation of Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) and wider clinical transformation in NHS Trusts across England.
She also freelances as an Associate Consultant undertaking investigative analysis work on organisational issues primarily in the voluntary and academic sectors.
Natalie Chishick
Director, Silver Buck
Natalie has over 15 years’ experience working in healthcare, delivering high-impact PR and marketing campaigns. She specialises in health-tech and has worked with companies ranging from blue-chip businesses to start-ups, implementing projects in brand development, lead generation, reputation management, media relations and digital media, crisis communications, stakeholder engagement, event management and public affairs.
Her previous roles include spearheading the industry trade body’s health and social care programmes (representing over 450 tech companies), and running a busy policy and communications department for an EPR supplier.
Richard Corbridge
CIO, Boots
Richard Corbridge is a globally recognised expert in digital technology and its application to healthcare strategy, with over 25 years experience in diverse CIO roles across the health, care and research sectors. Richard has a passion for innovation, business change and benefits management. As a leader he insists on a focus on engagement and benefits being brought to all technology implementation.
In 2019 he was appointed as the first Director of Innovation at Boots UK with a remit to deliver a transformed high street pharmacy and health and beauty experience for customers across the UK. In 2020 he was promoted to the Boots Executive as Chief Information Officer with responsibility for technology throughout the business.
Prior to Boots he led Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust as their first Chief Digital and Information Officer with a remit of bringing a ‘must do’ culture to the digital capability of the trust and ensuring that Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, one of the largest in the NHS, adopted a digital fabric to how it delivered health care by 2019.
In 2020 Richard was named by the Huffington Post as one of the most ‘Social CIOs’ in the world. You can see the daily ins and outs of his work and life by following him on twitter at: @r1chardatron
Richard Cox
Head of Nursing (Digital Transformation), Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
Richard has worked within critical care in the UK and Australia, cardiac care and acute care. He has spent much of his career focusing on improving care for the acutely unwell adult focusing particularly the role of technology can play which was regionally and nationally recognised. In 2019, Richard was appointed to his current role as Head of Nursing (Digital Transformation) supporting nursing, midwifery and AHP (NMAHP) services through the implementation of the acute electronic patient record across Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT). Richard has also grown a unique multi professional Digital NMAHP Team and a team of Digital Matrons to enhance the NMAHP leadership and experience in digital.
The EPR implementation has been the largest in England including 10 hospitals and over 8000 nurses, midwives and AHP colleagues. Richard is now focusing on post go live optimisation activities and opportunities to improve patient experience and develop nursing, midwifery and AHP practice. Richard has recently completed cohort 4 of the NHS Digital Academy Digital Health Leadership course.
Marilize du Preez
Improvement and Transformation lead, Hywel Dda University Health Board
Having qualified as a physiotherapist Marilize worked across numerous health care settings before commencing a post as clinical lead physiotherapist for Critical Care and Surgery at Hywel Dda University Health Board. She completed a MSc in Critical Care Medicine and has extensive clinical experience. After being involved in local and national improvement projects she was seconded to the 1000LivesPlus Campaign in Wales as National Programme Manager for Enhanced Recovery After Surgery between 2011-2012. She is currently the Improvement and Transformation Lead within Hywel Dda University Health Board and in 2020 she graduated as an IHI Improvement Advisor
Catherine Dampney
Chief Information Officer, NHS South, Central and West
As a CIO Catherine has lead health system Integration Programmes and the development of Shared Care records. Catherine currently specialises in Data & Analytics Strategies to support Population Health Management, System Planning and Research working across Health & care Systems and with academic partners. As a lead on the Health Data Research Strand at The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute & a member of the Better Care Executive Group (University of Bristol) she supports the development of innovative partnerships in local health & care systems. Catherine is also a founding member of the National Digital Health CIO Network, and an alumni of the National CIO Advisory Panel. As a member of the Digital Alliance Partnership Board, she advises on National Policy & Data Strategy on behalf of the National CIO Network.
Pav Deagon
Lead Pharmacist – Pharmacy Informatics & Digtial Medicines, NELFT
Melynda Decker
Director of Clinical Solutions, N. Europe, Middle East & Africa, Elsevier
Melynda is passionate about improving healthcare and has extensive experience in global health markets. Currently she leads Elsevier Health clinical decision support initiatives in Northern Europe and Middle East. During her 14 years at Elsevier, she has overseen the development and launch of multiple Clinical Solutions products. Melynda has a background in actuarial science and achieved her credentials at UnitedHealthcare, a U.S.-based health insurer. She lives in Zürich, Switzerland, with her husband and three boys.
Dr Alex Deng
Programme Lead for Fellowships in Clinical Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value Based Healthcare
Alexander is the Programme Lead for the Fellowships in Clinical Artificial Intelligence, and author of the accompanying Clinical Artificial Intelligence Curriculum. This programme equips NHS frontline clinicians with the expertise to deploy AI in clinical workflows. It is the first of its kind in the UK.
Alexander has developed auditable standards for AI in healthcare with the British Standards Institution as an editorial panel chair, and also evaluates clinical AI technology at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust.
Gurnak Dosanjh
GP and Clinical Lead for Home First and Urgent & Emergency Care, Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB
Gurnak is an NHS General Practitioner and is passionate about digital innovation and reducing health inequalities. He is experienced in the transformation of clinical pathways in numerous projects around the UK. These have included digital pathways for long term conditions, virtual wards, deterioration detection and proactive care.
Gurnak is keen to ensuring that patients remain at the very centre of any innovation and transformation.
Christopher El-Badaoui
CEO & Co-Founder, LVNDR
Chris is responsible for driving LVNDR’s vision, and business strategy as well as building and managing a phenomenal team to revolutionise LGBTQ+ healthcare. They are a 2x founder and have previously built accelerators and investment vehicles for Parsons School of Design, Techstars and the NFL. Prior to that, they led Growth and Strategy at Pillar Tech disrupting legacy industries with Fortune 500 companies.
Chris is a non-binary entrepreneur and the Co-Founder and CEO of LVNDR a sexual health platform that improves sexual wellbeing for LGBTQ+ individuals and modernises sexual healthcare for clinics. Having experienced inadequate care across multiple continents, they’re driven to bring about a solution that closes the gap that exists between heteronomative and queer individuals. Their goal is that everyone irrespective of their background can receive an affirmative, inclusive, and respectful environment of care.
Tracey Eyre
Programme Lead Nurse, Digital Readiness Education, Health Education England
Tracey is the Lead Nurse in the Digital Readiness Education team at Health Education England and is currently leading The Phillips Ives Nursing & Midwifery Review. This review will provide an in-depth, evidence based, achievable set of co-designed future recommendations with the aim of ensuring all nurses and midwives are competent to practice safely and effectively in digitally enabled health and social care now and in the future.
She brings 12 years of experience as a nurse specialist in clinical informatics from Project Nurse, at the beginning of a large acute trust’s digital journey into EPR development, to clinical lead supporting its transformation into one of the most digitally mature NHS Trusts in the U.K. In this role Tracey led a huge training exercise, training 14,000 staff over 6 weeks and achieved the highest ever percentage of staff trained for a Cerner go live (2019).
In 2020 she was a member of the senior nursing team at NHS Nightingale North East Hospital leading on regional discharge planning and digitisation.
Anna Fishta
Programme Lead, Frimley Health and Care ICS
I am the Connected Care Programme Lead at NHS Frimley with responsibility for leading the Remote Monitoring and Shared Care Record elements. I have over 20 years healthcare experience across operational, digital and transformation roles. Since 2018, I have been working on the Connected Care programme using digital and analytics to improve and transform patient care.
Gianluca Fontana
CEO and Co-Founder, Prova Health
Prova Health helps innovators generate the evidence they need to succeed.
He is also Deputy Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, where he previously led the Centre for Health Policy. He started his career in management consulting at Imperial College London.
He has advised businesses, health systems and hospitals in over 20 countries.
Marc Farr
Chief Analytical Officer, East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust
On leaving the management consultancy Experian I joined UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis as a senior research fellow. It was there that I made initial contact with Dr Foster, analysing the relationship between geodemography and health outcomes. We were looking at the use of postcode level statistics to standardise hospital mortality rates alongside variables such as age, sex and diagnosis to enable hospitals to be compared with one another. In 2004 I joined Dr Foster as Director of Product Development where I oversaw the company’s development of tools across clinical benchmarking, financial management and health needs mapping. In 2007 I was made Honorary Professor at UCL in the field of Geomatic and Civil Engineering. In 2010 I joined East Kent University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust where I am Chief Analytical Officer responsible for informatics, coding and AI, I am also the Chair of the Analytics Board for Kent and Medway. I am a graduate of the King’s Fund future leaders course and was named in the HSJ Top 50 Innovators in Health 2013. I am the Founder of Beautiful Information, an Analytics consultancy and OpenDataSavesLives, a not for profit research body.
Elise Featherstone
Graduate Digital Project Manager, West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership
Elise is a Graduate Digital Project Manager working within the Digital Programme of the West Yorkshire ICB. She currently leads a digital inclusion expansion project which aims to reduce digital exclusion and health inequalities across the area through improved access to digital devices and data.
As a type 1 Diabetic Elise has experienced first hand the impact of technological advancements within the delivery of diabetes care and supports the continued delivery of digital solutions to aid management of the condition and independence for patients.
Rochelle Featherstone
Graduate Business Change Manager, NHS Wakefield CCG
Rochelle is a Graduate Business Change Manager working for the West Yorkshire ICB as part of the Digital team on the Graduates into Health Scheme. She is currently assisting with the implementation of the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record. Rochelle’s passion for working in Digital Healthcare stems from living with Type 1 Diabetes for almost twenty years. Digital advances in healthcare have completely changed her quality of life whilst managing her condition.
Rochelle partakes in spreading awareness of Type 1 Diabetes which has included guest speaking about her condition and the Digital advances of Diabetes care on BBC Radio 4. Rochelle aligns with delivering Digital Healthcare for the future and improving patient care through technology.
Thomas Fish
Specialist Radiotherapy Practitioner For IM&T, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, Topol Digital Fellow
Tom is a Therapeutic Radiographer and proud AHP with a background in radiotherapy treatment delivery and research. He’s currently the radiotherapy informatics lead at the Royal Berkshire FT, where he’s delivering a digital transformation programme targetting the digitalisation of processes and the introduction of automation with a focus on improving patient safety and process efficiency. He’s also undertaken a Topol Digital Fellowship, where he spent his time developing software to automate and manage patient pathways.
James Freed
Chief Information Officer, Health Education England
James Freed is the Chief Digital and Information Officer for Health Education England. His career has taken him through Cancer Research, Change Management and Standards development. As well as being a CDIO, he is responsible for supporting the digital readiness of three million staff in Health and Care in England.
In 2017 James was voted by peers as one of the top 100 influencers globally in Health IT as part of the #HIT100 twitter campaign and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
Amy Freeman
Chief Digital Information Officer, UHNM
Amy Freeman is the Chief Digital Information Officer at University Hospitals of North Midlands. Amy has worked in the field of information technology (IT) support and digital since 1998, she joined the NHS in 2002. She has held senior IT and digital leadership roles at NHS Connecting for Health (now NHS Digital), NHS Commissioning Board (now NHS England), Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership NHS Trust (now Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) and Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Amy moved to work for NHS provider organisations to be closer to frontline care (Community and Acute) to help make a difference to the safety and quality of care provided to patients. This has included the delivery of a range of clinical systems most notably an electronic patient record system for 6500 staff, patient portal and a virtual clinic solution. Amy’s ambition is for “geeks to save lives”. Using technology to support the clinical decisions clinicians make with their patients about their care and treatment.
Reducing the risk of error. More recently Amy has been interested in how digital can help (or in some cases hinder) the equality and diversity agenda. Using data to drive a better understanding of our citizens, their care and their outcomes.
Sherif Gonem
Consultant Respiratory Physician, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Sherif Gonem is a respiratory physician in Nottingham with a research interest in applications of AI and big data in medicine. He is currently investigating the use of AI-based scoring systems and wearable technology for detecting patient deterioration in hospital. He is the recipient of an MRC Clinical Academic Research Partnership award and has recently received a grant from the NHS Transformation Directorate to introduce wearable respiratory rate monitors at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Hiren Gandhi
Programme Management Consultant, Digital Evolution Consulting
With 20+ years of digital consulting experience across NHS and local government, Hiren has successfully delivered many digital transformation programmes.
Hiren adopts a holistic approach to transformation, proactively engaging with C-Suite, board and stakeholder groups to strategize new and achievable digital roadmaps.
Currently, Hiren is working with Southwark Council’s Public Health team to reduce health inequalities within the borough by leading a programme of pioneering digitally-enabled solutions for residents including the Digital Health Checks project.
Dr Malte Gerhold
Director of Innovation and Improvement, The Health Foundation
Malte Gerhold joined the Health Foundation in May 2022 as Director of Innovation and Improvement.
Malte leads the Foundation’s work to support radical innovation and improvement in health and care services, providing insights, practical resources and funding to enable change, including through new technologies and data. He also oversees the Foundations strategic partnerships in this space, including the Q Community, THIS Institute, and IMPACT Centre.
He was previously Chief Integrated Care Officer at Birdie, a digital startup helping to reinvent the way we age, where he led its collaboration across social care and the NHS. Before that he was Executive Director of Strategy and Intelligence at the Care Quality Commission, leading on its methodology, analytics and communications, including its regulatory approach to new innovations and improvement. He has also lived and worked in Sierra Leone, and in the UK he worked at the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, the Department of Health, and Accenture.
He is a member of the Sciana Health Leaders Network, and a Fellow of the RSA. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the London School of Economics and a Masters and PhD from the University of Oxford.
Dr Saira Ghafur
Lead for Digital Health, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London
Saira is the Digital Health Lead at the Institute of Global Health Innovation and Security Science Fellow at ISST, Imperial College London and a honorary consultant in respiratory medicine at St Mary’s Hospital. At Imperial College Saira has spearheaded the College’s collaboration for healthcare cybersecurity. Saira also leads work on evidence generation for digital health, the value of healthcare data and AI and machine learning for health in low and middle income countries.
Saira is also the co-founder of two start-ups: Psyma (mental health) and Prova Health (evidence generation in digital health). Saira holds a MSc in Health Policy from Imperial and was also a Harkness Fellow in Health Policy and Practice in New York (2017).
Lincoln Gombedza
Member, NHS Digital Shared Professional Decision-Making Council and Learning Disability Nurse at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare Trust
As a newly qualified Learning Disability Nurse, Lincoln is passionate about using digital technologies to improve patient outcomes. He is actively involved in several organizations that align with this goal, including the Florence Nightingale Clinical Supervision Subject Expert Group, the NMC Standards Development Group, and the Learning Disability Nursing National Shared Professional Decision-Making Council. Recently, Lincoln has been exploring the potential benefits of Extended Reality (XR) for individuals with learning disabilities.
His passion for utilising future technologies in nursing caught the attention of Helen Crowther, National Digital Primary Care Nurse, who invited him to join the NHS Digital Shared Professional Decision-Making Council and contribute his expertise and insights in using XR technology to improve patient outcomes. Additionally, Lincoln completed a Resilience-based Clinical Supervision program with the Foundation of Nursing Studies and had the privilege of working with the esteemed Joanne Bosanquet MBE.
In his free time, Lincoln volunteers with organizations such as NextGenNurse and the We are the NHS campaign to give back to his community and to promote the importance of digital innovation in healthcare.
Will Goodwin
Assistant Director of Programmes – Digital Maturity, NHS England
Will has a proven track record of delivering large-scale digital transformation initiatives and has led multi-disciplinary teams in the development and implementation of complex technology programs. He has extensive experience in managing the complete lifecycle of digital projects, from strategy and planning to execution and delivery.
Throughout his career, Will has demonstrated his ability to drive innovation and improve operational efficiency, resulting in significant cost savings. He has a deep understanding of digital technology and is passionate about using it as a transformational enabler to improve health and care outcomes.
Jules Gudgeon
National Digital Midwife Lead for Maternity Services, NHS England
Jules Gudgeon has been a midwife for over 30 years, championed the use of digital technology during the National Maternity Review and was subsequently appointed the Lead Midwife within the Digital Maternity Programme at NHS Digital.
She was instrumental in the development of the award-winning Digital Midwives Expert Reference Group which aims to support digital leadership across England.
She is now the National Digital Midwife Lead for Maternity Services within the Transformation Directorate at NHS England. Whilst continuing to support digital transformation within maternity Jules is also focused on digital leadership and specifically the specialist role of the digital midwife.
Kevin Hamer
Principle, Advance Digital Limited
Kev has 30 years NHS experience of creating innovative solutions to improve clinical workflow and patient experience. He is responsible for the development of award-winning personal health record exemplar, My Medical Record (at University Hospital Southampton NHSFT) and retains a keen interest in all solutions preventing hospital activity and improving patient experience.
Clare Hurley
COO, ieso
Clare is the UK Chief Operating Officer. A dynamic and passionate leader of mental health services, she drives ieso forwards in clinical excellence and achieving the best possible patient outcomes. Prior to joining ieso in 2022, she held a number of senior clinical leadership roles in the public healthcare sector, with a strong track record of managing transformational change within a range of psychological services.
Clare is both a fully qualified Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and fully qualified social worker and has a solid background in research, having a Masters degree in Social Research Methods from The London School of Economics and Political Science. Her unique blend of skills makes her an invaluable member of ieso’s senior leadership team.
Rebecca Hilsenrath
Director of Strategy
Joanne Hadley
Digital AND Workforce Lead Midwife, NHS England
Jo Hadley is the first Regional Digital Midwifery Lead in NHS England supporting maternity services to make best use of digital technology and develop a culture that embraces the benefits technology plays in improving patient care/experience. Jo has extensive experience and clinical background within frontline maternity services. She has a Healthcare Leadership Masters and is passionate about supporting Digital Midwives through coaching, mentoring and leadership support and improving maternity care for women and their families.
Deborah Hale
Deputy Chief Nursing Information officer, Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust
Sarah Hanbridge
CCIO Nursing & AHP, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Sarah is a Registered Adult Nurse & Practice Lecturer/Practitioner predominantly working within Acute trust with 28 years of clinical and leadership experience. Her current role is a Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) Nursing & AHP Leeds teaching hospital Sarah was previously a Regional CNIO Northwest. Sarah attained one of the first Florence Nightingale Digital Scholarships in 2020, during the pandemic Sarah set up the Northwest Regional CNIO/Mid-wife and AHP network. Sarah is the CNIO Chair of the Digital Health Network Sarah’s and CHIME UK & INTERPenAPI Board member her passion is digital transformation to improve patient care.
James Hawkins
Chief Digital and Information Officer, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
James is a highly experienced digital, technology and business leader who has led and delivered some of the highest profile digital programmes, products and services in the UK. James is currently the Chief Digital and Information Officer at York and Scarborough NHS Foundation Trust and prior to that he had several different roles on the executive team at NHS Digital and has been central to the delivery of many of the national NHS IT systems and services.
Jane Hayward
Senior Responsible Officer, Wessex Imaging Network and Southampton Counties Pathology Network
Jane has worked in the NHS for 36 years undertaking various roles in Trusts, including most recently at University Hospitals Southampton. Since 2017 she has been responsible for leading the development of the Southern Counties Pathology Network and since 2021 the Wessex Imaging Network.
Prof Louise Hicks
CNIO and Director of Development, Barts Health NHS Trust
Professor Louise Hicks is the CNIO and Director of Development at Barts Health NHS Trust, London. She leads on transformation and engagement in health informatics, is a Digital Pioneer Fellow and in 2022 was awarded the UK Digital Health CNIO of the Year. Louise is passionate about the NHS, its teams and is committed to generating new solutions, leading with care and making a positive difference in health outcomes for our communities.
Ruth Holland
Deputy CIO, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Ruth joined Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as Deputy CIO in 2011, having been a Board-level ICT Director south of the Thames. She is passionate about digital professionals being part of the multidisciplinary healthcare team and maximising the value of data to help deliver quality patient care and research. Ruth has been the Association of Professional Healthcare Analysts (AphA) London branch lead since December 2020 and invests time in developing the next generation of analytics leaders.
Dr Matthew Howard
International Head, Healthcare Data Science & Strategic Programmes, Amazon Web Services
Rebecca Howard
CEO and Founder, ShinyMind
Rebecca Howard FRSA is an award-winning entrepreneur, psychotherapist, and executive coach.
Rebecca is CEO and founder of ShinyMind, an evidence based mental health and wellbeing app, co-created with NHS staff which is now available to their patients as a digital ‘wellbeing prescription’. The ShinyMind app was recently made available free-of-charge to the entire NHSE nursing and midwifery community.
She has worked with the NHS for over 18 years, in leadership development and mindset, wellbeing, confidence, performance and self-compassion.
Jim Hughes
Director of Digital Programmes, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
Max Hughes
Chief Clinical Information Officer North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust
I am the CCIO at NWAS, with responsibility for Clinical Records and EPR, Information Governance, and our Directory of Service (DoS) Teams.
My background is as a hospital based clinical pharmacist; however, I’ve always had a passion for digital technology. I started working in a digital role as the Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration lead at Bolton, I then gained a place on the NHS Digital Academy and have continued to progress within digital since.
Robert Hunter
Senior Software Engineer, Scotland’s National Digital Platform for Health & Social Care
Robert Hunter is a Senior Software Engineer who has been working with NHS Education for Scotland for 3 years. He has spent most of his career working in the health sector building web and mobile applications.
Currently he is a member of a team responsible for building the core services for their National Digital Platform. As well as working on the team responsible for hosting and maintaining their OpenEHR service Robert also worked with a product team to build their first application that uses OpenEHR as its data store.
Bash Hussain
Deployment Director, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Basharat Hussain is NPIC Deployment Director at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, with a focus on driving the deployment of digital pathology across NPIC partner sites. With more than 20 years’ experience in programme management across public and private sectors, he is a Prince 2 practitioner, Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) Practitioner, and has a BSc in Computing.
Hazel Jones
Head of Health, MadeTech
Hazel Jones is the Head of Health at Made Tech. She has a passion for working with the NHS to deliver services that improve the wellbeing of citizens.
Hazel has a vast wealth of experience in digitally-driven design and development. She has been Director of NHS Digital’s Apps & Wearables Programme and has delivered 80 apps that have been featured on NHS.uk.
Throughout her career, Hazel has driven policy, regulatory and standards for digital tools as well as upskilling teams using agile delivery. Most recently, she has worked alongside NHS Blood and Transplant as a part of the Covid response, rapidly delivering a national postal blood sampling service to identify plasma donors with high-grade antibodies.
Paul Johnson
CEO and Co-founder, Radar Healthcare
Paul Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Radar Healthcare comes from a software background and is passionate about applying technology to solve business problems. He strongly believes that innovation and digital systems are the key to easing the pressures on healthcare, especially as they experience compliance, reputational and commercial challenges which can have a direct impact on the quality of care itself. Radar Healthcare was founded in 2012 to help address these challenges and bring about much needed automation and efficiencies and help improve the quality of care.
Paul is actively engaged across a wide number of areas within the healthcare sector. He also volunteers for the NHS to support his local community, most recently helping with the COVID-19 vaccine roll out as a steward and can be seen speaking at various events to champion the importance of technology.
Kevin Jarrold
Joint Chief Information Officer, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust and for the NW London Integrated Care Board
Nicc Johnson
Founder and CEO, Music Health
Nicc Johnson is a music-loving, serial entrepreneur who’s been rockin’ and rollin’ in the music industry for 21 years. His ultimate goal has been to empower others through the power of music.
Through his experiences as a DJ and his learnings as a musicologist, Nicc became fascinated with AI and the potential to measure the psychological and physiological impact of music and apply it to recommendation systems.
Music Health is Nicc’s third company and second tech venture. In 2014, he founded his first tech company, PRSNL.AI, which focused on solving the biggest problem in music streaming and personalization – automated and accurate music metadata. He invented the AI Music Brain™ and VibeDNA® audio analysis tools, which were modelled to break down songs the way the human brain does.
Jane Johnston
Head of PHM Analytics, Surrey Heartlands ICS; Executive Director, Association of Professional Healthcare Analysts (AphA)
Monica Jones
Chief Data Officer for University of Leeds & Associate Director for HDR UK
Monica Jones BSc (Hons) PGCE PGDip FBCS CITP MInstLM
Monica Jones is the Chief Data Officer for the University of Leeds and Associate Director for Health Data Research (HDRUK), based in Leeds in the UK.
A technical expert and leader with extensive education, science and technology, healthcare knowledge and experience. Highly skilled CDO / CIO and Enterprise Architect with a proven track record of designing and delivering complex, high value solutions to exceptional standards. Many years’ experience defining strategy and directing, current and future, Information and Data Systems.
Monica is the Chair of the Design Authority (DA) and Scientific Committee for HDRUK North. She is also the senior technical lead for the YH Secure Data Environment (SDE).
Ramandeep Kaur
Chief Clinical Information Officer, University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group
I am an enthusiastic individual, who is passionate about digital innovation and transformation, clinical informatics and raising the profile of Pharmacy and AHPs in the digital world. I am currently the Chief Clinical Information Officer at University Hospitals of Northamptonshire. I have completed the Digital Health.London Pioneer Fellowship and Digital Health Leadership Academy programme. I am proud to be co vice chair of the CCIO advisory panel, Faculty of Clinical Informatics and Shuri Network member.
David Lawson
Director of Medical Technology, NHS Policy and Performance, Department of Health and Social Care
Newly appointed Med Tech Director for DHSC with responsibility for setting the direction of future UK Med Tech policy. Launched the Government’s first strategy for Medical Technology in February: Right Product, Right Place, Right Price. Member of the Life Science Council Medical Devices Regulatory Advisory Group. Previous Chief Procurement Officer for 21 years at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Early adopter of value based procurement and a long track record of partnership working with industry and supporting innovation.
Guy Lucchi
Managing Director of Healthcare, System C Healthcare
Guy leads System C’s healthcare division helping our customers to digitally transform how they work to improve patient outcomes and workforce experience. He is passionate about the power that digital can bring to address the “wicked challenges” faced in healthcare. He has a proven track record for delivering some of the most complex digital enabled, healthcare transformation programmes. He was previously joint Digital Innovation Director and CDO for the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (ICS).
Prof Joe McDonald
Medical Director, Parsek Solutions
Neesa Mangalaparathy
XR Programme Delivery Lead, NHS England
Neesa Mangalaparathy is the programme delivery lead for extended reality technologies for NHS England, and has worked in healthcare for over 15 years. She has spent the first 12 years working across academia, the voluntary sector and NHS Trust level before holding posts at a national level.
Neesa is passionate about using digital technologies to deliver the best health care services and improve patient outcomes.
Peter Mann
Digital Strategy Lead, Xerox
Peter is the NHS lead for Xerox in addition to being the digital transformation practice lead defining the methodology, process and customer success change programmes for Xerox clients. Peter works for and with senior leadership teams and change agents to define, drive and deliver digital strategies that, make every day work better for clients — no matter where that work is being done; creating new and lasting value in today’s hybrid world.
Gary McAllister
CTO, One London – NHS London
Gary McAllister is the Chief Technology Officer for the London Region and is responsible for the OneLondon programme – an award winning Shared Care Record programme. Gary has spent over 20 years working in the healthcare industry, previously the Chief Technology Officer at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Gary has an interest in technology, health policy and system level transformation and is a graduate of the Digital Leadership Academy. You can also purchase Gary’s book, An Introduction to Digital Healthcare in the NHS on Amazon.
Catherine McClennan
Programme Director, Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s Health and Maternity Partnership
Catherine has led on service transformation as Programme Director for Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s and Children’s Services Partnership since 2018. Since June 2022 she has led on the establishment of the Women’s Health and Maternity Vision and Programme for Cheshire and Merseyside, as Director.
Her role provides leadership for the Local Maternity and Neonatal System and setting out a vision, strategy and service improvements for all areas of women’s health; including reducing health inequalities and implementing initiatives which improve clinical outcomes and the wellbeing of women, babies and families. She is an advocate of social prescribing and community engagement and a working mum of 3 children. She is a Trustee of the University of Liverpool Maths College and is a champion for young people, lifelong learning and workforce development.
Euan McComiskie
Health Informatics Lead, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
Euan qualified as a Physiotherapist in 2007. He worked in clinical roles before his journey with clinical informatics began in 2012. His role at the CSP is to improve informatics knowledge and skills in the physiotherapy profession and to drive informatics inclusion in policy and strategy. He is co-vice chair of the CNIO Advisory Panel, co-lead for AHPs and a Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, and the Clinical Lead for Physiotherapy at ORCHA.
Pritesh Mistry
Policy Fellow for Digital Technologies, King’s Fund
Before joining the Fund, Pritesh led the innovation activity at the Royal College of General Practitioners encompassing system change, entrepreneurship, grassroots innovation and horizon-scanning. Before this he worked at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust helping to bring together clinicians and patients with research and technology to improve the care and outcomes of people with life-debilitating conditions such as heart failure.
Victoria Mustafa
Maternity Programme Manager & Digital Midwife, South West London Integrated Care System
I am an experienced Maternity Programme Manager, Digital Midwife, and Nurse with a passion for digital transformation. I am the co-chair for the PAN London Digital Midwives Expert Reference Group (DMERG) and members of both the national and regional Digital Shared Decision-Making Councils. I am currently on cohort 5 of the Digital Health Leadership Programme which is helping me to drive forward the digital agenda and help transform the NHS.
Sam Neville
Regional CNIO (Eastern) and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer (CNIO) – MSE Hospitals Group
Sam is an experienced senior nurse with 30yrs in the NHS, with a passion for developing staff and encouraging news ways of working. This is what has led to her interest in digital and use of data as an enablers for the nursing workforce to improve care. Sam has been CNIO at Mid and South Essex FT for 5yrs and is also currently the regional CNIO lead for Eastern region. Recently a Phillips Ives Fellow working on the AI, Data and Genomics panel.
Sarah Newcombe
Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital & London Region
Sarah is a paediatric nurse with over 25 years working within the NHS. She has been the CNIO at GOSH for 3 years, providing clinical leadership for a Trust wide EPR implementation. Sarah is keen to support our current and future workforce to incorporate technology into the way they deliver care.
Simon Noel
CNIO, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Simon has worked with clinical informatics for the past 20 years and leads a team of informatics nurses, working collaboratively with clinical, technical and organisational services. Simon is a member of the CNIO advisory panel for Digital Health, he is also on the Faculty of Clinical Informatics working groups for Professionalism, the Office of the CCIO, the FCI Nursing and Midwifery Advisory Panel, and contributed toward the What Good Looks Like Nursing Guidance, participating in the launch at Rewired in 2022.
Mitchell O’Gorman
CEO, xWave Technologies
Mitchell O’Gorman is the CEO of xWave Technologies who are on a mission to save lives by ensuring that patients get the best test first. Mitchell has over 15-years’ experience as a digital transformation leader, with experience across fast-paced start-ups and large, complex multinationals. Prior to joining xWave Technologies, Mitchell was the Managing Director for Kantar Ireland, a global leader in research and data, and Head of Innovation for Independent News and Media.
Ross O’Brien
Managing Director – UK & Europe, WYSA
Ross is the Managing Director of Wysa which is the world’s most advanced conversational AI for mental health. Ross was the Director of Innovation and Technology, CNWL and Programme Lead of the London Digital Talking Therapies Programme where he established the first etriage tool for Londoners. Ross is also a Founder of the UK XR Health Alliance which produced ‘The Growing Value of XR in Healthcare in the UK’
Anisha Patel
Academic Link Pharmacist, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT
Anisha has a podcast, The Pharmacist Diaries; in this podcast, she explores all aspects of peoples’ lives, their passions, starting a career in pharmacy, transitioning into different roles, overcoming challenges, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Her goal is to dive deeper into the secret lives of pharmacists, revealing their journeys and inspiring you to progress in your career.
Toby Page
Architecture Lead, Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland Care Record Partnership
Toby is currently working alongside health and care organisations in the region to deliver shared care record functionality aligning to local priorities. He is leading on discovery activities to ensure that challenges in different care settings are well understood and that technical capabilities solve the right problem. This also includes the design of standards for health and social care information that align to national and regional approaches.
In the past he has worked on health and care digital transformation initiatives with NHS trusts and local government in Leeds as well as on the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record. Toby’s previous experience has also included solution architecture, application development and clinical informatics for EMIS Health. He has a particular interest in using human-centred design and design-thinking methodologies alongside enterprise architecture best practice.
Dr Annabelle Painter
Honorary Fellow – Digital Health, Imperial College London
Dr Annabelle Painter is a GP registrar and honorary fellow in digital health research and education at Imperial College London. Her recent Clinical AI & workforce fellowship at HEE & the NHS AI Lab focussed on AI confidence in the healthcare workforce. Annabelle previously worked as an AI Clinician at Babylon Health developing and deploying an A+E triage chatbot within the NHS. Annabelle is an advisor to several healthtech companies and sits on the Royal Society of medicine Digital Health council.
Dave Pearson
Hive Programme Director, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
Programme Director of Hive at MFT which is the Epic EPR that went live on 8th September 2022 across our 10 Hospitals and Local Care Organisation. Prior to Hive, 20 years NHS operational management experience and held a number of senior roles at MFT including Director of Clinical & Scientific Services, Director of Surgery and Chief of Staff.
Neil Perry
Digital Health Consultant
Awarded in the top 100 UK CIOs for 2020, 2021 & 2022.
Neil is a Digital Health Innovator with 25 Years NHS experience across Best of Breed, Best in KLAS and Mega-suite EPR Strategies. With experience across systems integration, Major Project, Programme implementation and Strategy Development.
His career includes multiple 1st of types across including Audio and Imaging Artificial Intelligence and Smart-Wearables.
Leontina Postelnicu
Head of Health and Social Care, techUK
Leontina joined techUK in March 2020, where she is now heading up the organisation’s Health and Social Care programme. At the moment, she is also completing an MSc in Health Policy at Imperial College London.
A former journalist, Leontina previously worked for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) as an associate editor for its International and Media divisions. There, she covered the EMEA region for Healthcare IT News, MobiHealthNews and HIMSS TV, with a focus on policy and innovation, and contributed to the Women in Health IT newsletter and HIMSS Insights eBook.
Outside of work, she enjoys reading, dancing, travelling and visiting her family in Romania, where she hails from.
Mélisande Rouger
Journalist
Tim Ringrose
President of the Digital Health Section, Royal Society of Medicine
A clinician by training, Tim was CEO of http://Doctors.net.uk before founding Cognitant Group to deliver personalised accessible health information to patients and the public. He is current president of the digital health council of the Royal Society of Medicine and advisor to healthtech companies.
Simon Rasalingam
CEO, Behold.AI
In 2003, Simon founded MEDICA which he boot-strapped up to be the UK’s No 1 teleradiology provider, a company now listed on the LSE. Simon sold MEDICA to the largest charity in the UK, Nuffield Health in 2013. A pioneer in technology driven Radiology services he has now created Behold.ai, with the single goal of utilising AI to tackle the issues in cancer and stroke facing healthcare system internationally, post COVID-19. Behold.ai is the winner of the Prix Galien UK 2022 for the ‘Best Digital Health Software’ for red dot® V2 Clinical Analysis Software, the UK life sciences’ most prestigious awards for innovation considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Dr Satya Raghuvanshi
Head of Clinical, Accurx
Satya is Head of Clinical at Accurx, a communication platform used in over 150 NHS Trusts and by 98% of GP practices. Accurx is on a mission to join up communication across healthcare, to make patients healthier, staff happier, and the system more efficient.
Dr Ayesha Rahim
Clinical Lead for Digital Mental Health & CMIO, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS FT Her Clinical Lead for Digital Mental Health role is for NHS England
Ayesha Rahim is a consultant psychiatrist and CCIO. She is also the Clinical Lead for Digital Mental Health in the new Transformation Directorate of NHSE/I. She leads a team of clinical informaticians in her organisation and has successfully delivered several large-scale digital transformation projects. She is a founding member of the Shuri Network which supports BAME women in digital health, and offers personal shadowing opportunities and mentoring to other professionals. Ayesha is also a Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, and is a keen proponent of User Centred Design.
Dr James Reed
CCIO, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS FT
James Reed is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist and Chief Clinical Information Officer at Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health NHS FT. He was first appointed as CCIO in 2013 and during this time has overseen a range of digital projects including BSMHFT’s role in the Global Digital Exemplar Programme. He is also clinical lead for the West Midlands Shared Care Record programme. James has been involved in the CCIO network since its inception and has been on the advisory panel for the last 6 years and was elected chair in 2019 and re-elected in 2021.
Sally Rennison
Chief Commercial Officer, Patients Know Best
Sally has spent nearly 10 years in healthcare IT focusing on electronic patient records. As someone who passionately believed in and recognised the value and the importance of acknowledging the patient as part of the provision of healthcare, Sally joined Patients Know Best in 2016 to support the progress and expansion of access to Personal Health Records overseeing all customer contracts and company alignment with national initiatives and priorities.
Lee Rickles
Yorkshire & Humber Care Record Programme Director and CIO, Humber Teaching NHS FT
He is a member of the CIO advisory board, a CHIME Certificated Health Chief Information Officer and alumni of the Digital Academy. He has three decades transformation and programme management experience. His first decade focused on UK military aircraft project for the T-45 Goshawk, Sea Harrier, AV-8B and Nimrod. During the last two decades, he has focused on digital transformation in the NHS, Information Technology services and Business Intelligence for NHS organisations. He has also had significant experience in the development of change strategies; digital developments and procurement of Information Technology Services and systems.
He is currently is leading the development of the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record, Digital transformation of Humber Coast & Vale ICS and the CIO of Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust.
Philip Sinclair
Associate Partner, IBM
Phil has 23 years of experience in technology enabled transformation in Healthcare gobally. He has worked client side as a technology leader for healthcare providers closely coupled to the NHS, and supplier side in providing both technology solutions and advisory and professional services consulting, primarily into the NHS. He leads IBM Consulting’s healthcare maturity assessment capability into EMEA, advises a range of healthcare clients on the development of technology investment cases and delivery programmes, with a particular focus on EPR, and leads teams in designing and devlivering Enterprise Data and Analytics Platforms.
Dr Robert Simister
Clinical Lead for Stroke, University College London Hospitals NHS FT
Dr Rob Simister is a consultant in Stroke Medicine and Neurology. He has been Clinical Director for Stroke and Acute Neurology at UCLH Foundation Trust since 2016 and service lead since 2012. Dr Simister’s service development and research interests are focussed on the application of new technology to improve the efficiency of stroke clinical networks and to transform the experience of living with stroke for stroke survivors and their carers. Dr Simister is the lead clinician for the MyStrokeCompanion digital support platform.
Nick Sinclair
Director of Operations – Patient Access and Performance, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust
Nick has been the Director of Operations – Patient Access and Performance since 2020. He started his NHS career in Kent Ambulance Service in 1994 and became an Advanced Paramedic specialising in Urgent Care and also delivered Paramedic and Advanced Driver training before moving on to operational leadership roles. He moved to the Acute sector in 2016 and has been responsible for leading Emergency Medicine, Specialist Medicine and Central Operations.
Nick’s latest success was to implement the Care Coordination Centre, a digitally enabled centre improving productivity and patient flow supporting the organisation to maintain it’s position as one of the best performing NHS Trust’s in the country.
Lauren Scanlon
Lead Data Scientist, The Christie NHS FT
Lauren is Lead Data Scientist at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, leading a team of statisticians and data scientists in the use of statistical and data science techniques for the prescriptive and predictive analysis of data to improve outcomes for patients treated at the hospital.
Through this role, she has worked on developing machine learning models and helping inform the strategy for the usage of AI at the Trust and is extremely interested in the assurance of the safe implementation and adoption of machine learning and AI in healthcare.
Richard Sloggett
Founder and Programme Director, Future Health Research
Richard Sloggett is the Founder and Programme Director of Future Health, a healthcare specialist public policy research centre. He was previously a Senior Fellow at Westminster think tank Policy Exchange and from 2018-19 was Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Richard is a regular commentator in the national media on health and social care and has been named as one of the top 100 people in UK healthcare policy by the Health Service Journal.
During his time with the Secretary of State, Richard worked across Whitehall, the NHS and local government on major policy decisions including the NHS Long Term Plan, the Technology Vision and the Prevention Green Paper. Richard is undertaking his doctoral thesis in preventative healthcare systems at Liverpool University. He has a Masters Degree with Distinction from the University of Nottingham and a Bachelors Degree from the University of Durham.
Dr Gemma Stacey
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Director of Research and Policy, Florence Nightingale Foundation
Professor Gemma Stacey is currently Deputy CEO of the Florence Nightingale Foundation. Gemma has specific expertise in digitally enabled person centred practice and has brought this expertise to the Philips Ives Review as a panel chair and through the FNF digital leadership scholarships and programmes.
Yasmin Stinchcombe
Senior Programme Manager (Maternity Cover), DigitalHealth.London
Yasmin joined the NHS five years ago, starting as a Graduate Management Trainee at Guy’s and St Thomas (GSTT) before progressing to a Service Manager role.
As a Service Manager, Yasmin specialised in the operational and strategic management of outpatient services, working with the clinical team to improve the patient journey. Yasmin has experience of writing NHS business cases, managing a large administration and implementing digital technology within a clinical setting.
Yasmin has been involved in the implementation of an electronic patient record in GSTT’s outpatient services and the development and successful management of an online digital booking system for Paediatric Allergy Challenges.
Hadleigh Stollar
Chief Executive Healthcare, Innovaton Consortium
Hadleigh Stollar is the Founder and CEO of Healthcare Innovation Consortium. Responsible for the delivery of the award-winning National Record Locator, worked on the NHS X LHCR programme and has been successful in lobbying Parliament to change digital policy for breast cancer. With extensive public and private health sector experience, HIC was set up to work with the health and care systems on the implementation and spread of technologies with the aim of improving care through tech.
Joe Stringer
Partner, Octopus Ventures
Joe Stringer has over 24 years experience in healthtech. He is a partner at Octopus Ventures, one of the most active VC funds in the sector with a vision to improve over 1bn lives. Prior to Octopus, Joe was market leader for Google Health in EMEA and led the Ventures and Healthcare practices for EY.
Natalie Sutcliffe
Delivery and Engagement Lead Digital Maturity and Capabilities, NHS England
Rebecca Taylor
Group Executive Director of Transformation and Quality Improvement, University Hospitals of Northamptonshire
Becky joined Kettering and Northampton Hospitals in October 2021, and has responsibility for leading the Transformation and Quality Improvement agenda across University Hospitals of Northamptonshire. This includes being the executive lead for large-scale transformation programmes across KGH and NGH, supporting and enabling a culture of quality improvement, and the monitoring and tracking of programmes and projects.
Becky spent much of her career in management consultancy supporting different acute providers, community providers, local authorities and NHS national bodies to develop strategies and transform services. She is a Health Foundation Q Community Fellow and is passionate about supporting staff to make things work better for both our patients and our staff..
Paul Tambeau
COO, Induction Healhcare Group
Paul is the Chief Operating Officer at Induction Healthcare, responsible for commercial and transformation functions within the company. He has over 18 years of experience in developing and executing strategy, growth, and transformation plans in healthcare companies and management consulting. Paul has been an integral part in leading joint ventures and detailed scaling across organisations in international operations across the public and private health sectors. Paul holds an MBA with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh in Business Administration.
Prof James Teo
Professor of Neurology, Kings College Hospital, & Clinical Director of Data Science and AI at Kings College Hospital and Guys & St Thomas Hospital.
Professor James Teo is a Professor of Neurology at Kings College Hospital, and Clinical Director of Data Science and AI at Kings College Hospital and Guys & St Thomas Hospital. He has led clinical AI and data science teams in NHS acute provider organisations, academic health science centres (Kings Health Partners) and Integrated Care Systems. His interest is in clinical natural language processing (Cogstack) and machine vision (AI Centre for Value-based Healthcare), and in scalable solutions for MLOps in healthcare.
Fayaz Tirmizi
Director, Modelling and Analytics KPMG in the UK
Ali Toft
Allied Health Professions Information Officer, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust
Ali is an Allied Health Professions Information Officer at Great Ormond Street Children’ s Hospital working across a wide range of digital transformation programmes and leading on the digital implementation plan for AHPs. Prior to this Ali worked as a Paediatric Occupational Therapist leading the community health and adaptions service at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust. It is here that Ali’s interest in values-based leadership alongside reflections on personal experiences as a patient and clinician began to shape her thinking and career path within digital health.
Ben Tongue
Digital Net Zero Lead (sustainability), NHS England
Ben is Leading the NHS England Transformation Directorate’s digital sustainability, net zero and climate resilience agendas. A Chartered Environmentalist and MIEMA with a PGCert in Innovation, Enterprise and Circular Economy, working across the NHS to drive sustainability and climate resilience through digital development. He has broad experience across a wide range of award-winning sustainability and environmental projects.
Roda Luz Trinidad
Clinical Informatics Lead Nurse, Barts Health NHS Trust
Dang is a Royal London Hospital adult critical care senior sister currently working as Informatics Lead at Barts Health NHS Trust supporting the organisation and the network’s digital transformation.
She is a Shuri Network fellow alumnus and member of the National and chair of the London regional Digital Shared professional Decision-Making Council (SDMC).
As an aspiring future leader of heath informatics in the NHS, she is taking the Digital Health Leadership Programme to push digital, data and innovation in transforming the health and care system whilst ensuring diversity and inclusion are at the centre of practice.
Sam Vollans
Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon. Clinical Lead for Leeds Virtual Fracture Clinic (VFC)
Mark Watson
Digital Programme Director, Sussex Health & Care Partnership
Mark Watson – Digital Programme Director – KSS AHSN.NHS Sussex I lead digital transformation for the Sussex Health and Care ICS; developing the ambition, strategy and driving impactful innovation and investment for our population of 1.7 million a health and care economy of around £4 Billion and a workforce of around 35,000. I am a strategic senior digital leader with 20 years experience leading and delivering Digital, Data and Technology services and transformation across complex organisations and environments in Health, Housing, Local Government and Police
Jenni West
Associate Director of Digital Change, Innovation Agency North West Coast (AHSN)
As Associate Director for Digital Change, Jenni’s role involves understanding the digital strategies across Cheshire and Mersey and Lancashire and South Cumbria and trying to support their agendas then linking them into national work. She is currently leading the evaluation of virtual wards across Cheshire and Merseyside and has background in business change and benefits realisation of digital technologies in health and social care.
Having worked in the NHS for over 15 years as a Pharmacy Technician, she then moved in to Health Informatics working with iSOFT to design and implement their Pharmacy Stock control system for the UK&I, as well as working for NHS North West on the National Programme for IT as Business Change and Benefits lead, Across Lancashire on various projects from step up step down bed management systems to the implementation of the Health Information Exchange and more recently at NHS Digital as Engagement Lead for NHS login and Personal Heath Records.
Tom Whicher
CEO and Founder, DrDoctor
Tom Whicher is CEO of DrDoctor and an NHS Innovation Fellow, where he works with the National Innovation Accelerator (NIA) to advance the adoption of evidence-based healthcare innovation.
Passionate about using technology to create sustainable healthcare systems, Tom delivered one of the first patient portals in the NHS in 2012 and has worked to put technology in the hands of patients ever since. He’s written on health tech for The Guardian, and been featured in The Independent, Sky News, LBC, CNBC, and across the health trade press.
Dr Simon Wallace
CCIO, Nuance
Dr Simon Wallace is the Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) of Nuance’s Healthcare division in the UK and Ireland. Simon has worked as a GP, hospital and public health doctor in Brighton and London. His interest in digital health began in the 90s when he spent a year at the King’s Fund investigating the impact of the internet on shared decision making between patients and their healthcare professional. For the past 20 years, he has worked for a range of organisations including Bupa, Dr Foster, Cerner Corporation and GSK across a range of technologies which include AI-powered speech recognition, electronic patient records, telemedicine, mobile health and lifestyle devices.
Jonathan West
Digital Clinical Safety Lead, University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group
Jonathan qualified as a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington in 1991. He gained experience of nursing in the United States and Tanzania. Jonathan specialised in Coronary Care nursing and since 2010 has been the Clinical Safety Officer at Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (now part of University Hospitals of Northamptonshire). Whilst at Kettering his work has been recognised nationally for his development of an exemplary IT Clinical Safety System.
Peter White
Chief Nursing Information Officer, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Trust
Peter is Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust first CNIO; a senior nurse working with the clinical, iDigital and Innovation teams. Having close working relationship with clinical staff to ensure they have access to the best digital solutions, Peter is transforming the way nurses deliver care for children and young people. Peter takes an active lead on nursing informatics, utilising data to improve patient care, safety and experience.
Peter is the chair for the UK Meditech User Group as well as an active member of the North West Digital Nurse, AHP and Midwifery Network. As the first specialist hospital in Europe to achieve HIMSS Stage 7, Alder Hey is at the forefront of digital innovation and implementation.
Andy Williams
Chief Digital Information Officer, Humber & North Yorkshire ICS
Andy Williams has over 20 years’ experience leading health and social care digital delivery organisations. His experience ranges from local interim CDIO roles to national leadership roles. As Director of AHLC Solutions Ltd, Andy has grown a company to support digital transformation programmes across the country, with extensive SME partnerships.
david williams
Digital Specialist Physiotherapist, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, Regional Clinical Leadership Fellow, NHS Midlands
David Williams is Regional Clinical Leadership Fellow within NHS Midlands where he leads several projects including Reconditioning the Nation and the Midlands AHP Informatics and Digital Network. Clinically, he works as a Digital Specialist Physiotherapist at the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton (UHDB). He also leads the Armed Forces Network at UHDB. He is the Vice-Chair of the Professional Committee at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and was awarded the Federation for Informatics Professionals 35 under 35 bursary after being identified as a future digital leader.
Dr Ruth Williamson
Acting CMO, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust
Ruth is a Clinical Radiologist and acting CMO as well as being a visiting professor at Bournemouth University where she chairs the university partnership. She is a board member of Wessex AHSN. She is committed to partnership working and is a clinical lead for the Wessex Imaging Network and for the Community Diagnostics Centres programme in Dorset bringing diagnostics closer to people’s homes and tackling inequalities in healthcare.