Prof Hatim Abdulhussein
Chief Executive Officer, Health Innovation, Kent Surrey Sussex
Hatim is the Chief Executive Officer for Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, part of the NHS Health Innovation Network and a GP in North West London.
Currently an Honorary Professor of Innovation and AI in the School of Medicine at the University of Surrey, Hatim sits on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Technology Appraisals Committee, the Responsible AI UK Health and Care Group and the Responsible AI Institute Sustainable AI Consortium. Hatim holds Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and Fellowship of Advance Higher Education and the British Computer Society.
As an international speaker, he has contributed to the publication of academic papers and white papers spanning workforce, education reform, innovation, primary care, digital health, and AI. Hatim is an advocate for safe, ethical, and responsible digital and AI transformation and ensuring workforce preparedness for new innovations and technologies in health and care.
Cara Afzal
Programme Director for Data & Digital, Health Innovation Manchester
She has led significant projects involving the development and deployment of large-scale innovations. Most notably, she was involved in a large-scale Electronic Patient Record (EPR) deployment, recognised as one of the largest digital transformations programmes undertaken within the NHS. Cara has also served as Divisional Director for Medicine, Outpatients, and Complex Health in the acute sector, which has expanded her understanding of the challenges faced by frontline staff.
Rowland Agidee
Chief Data & Analytics Officer, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust
Rowland is one of the first Chief Analytics Officers to be employed in the NHS, specialising in building and scaling data and analytics capabilities to become more “insight-driven”.
Rowland leads the delivery of data services at the University Hospital Derby and Burton, heading teams of multi-disciplinary data professionals to deliver data and analytics strategy and target operating models; the execution of data science and intelligent automation projects; and the industrialisation of data and analytics capabilities as part of a large-scale digital transformation programme.
He specialises in data and analytics driven change, working closely with senior executives to deliver against strategic business cases.
Yousaf Ahmad
ICS Chief Pharmacist and Director of Medicines, NHS Frimley
Tosin Akinlabi
Clinical Safety Officer, University Hospitals of Northamptonshire
Previous experience includes being instrumental in implementing and optimising digital health solutions to improve patient outcomes as a Senior Digital Nurse Specialist. Tosin is a Shuri Network Digital Fellowship graduate, FNF Aspiring Leadership Programme Alumni and has completed the Digital Health CNIO Mentoring Programme. She is a member of the CSO Council on the Digital Health Network, Shuri Network, BCS, Midland HPCA and Midland Digital Shared Decision Making Council.
Dr Anwar Alhaq
Genomics Programme Director & CogStack, Co-Lead King’s College Hospital
Dr Alhaq is has been a peer reviewer for the United Kingdom & Belgium Accreditation Services for medical laboratory services and a past reviewer of the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales. As an academic researcher, he was a principal investigator and senior lecturer at KCL, London from 2002-2012 and a visiting senior lecturer at Kingston University, helping to set up and teach on the MSc programme on Cancer Studies.
Dr Alhaq is a Clinical Medical Advisor to the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), leading the Bank’s strategy of developing a chain of African Medical Centres of Excellence (AMCE) focusing on delivering tertiary referral centres. He is a non-executive director of the first AMCE in Abuja, Nigeria, focusing on cancer, cardiovascular disease, and haematological medicine.
Dr Alhaq served as Chief Clinical Scientist at King’s College Hospital from 2016-2022 and was a non-executive director of Viapath Pathology from 2012-2018. At an operational role, he has held several divisional roles within KingsPath and Viapath pathology services and was an operational lead and board member of the South-East pathology Transformation Programme from 2018-2021. He was operational lead for the 100,000 Genomes project at King’s College Hospital from 2014-2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was seconded to the NHS Test & Trace programme to help expand the SARS-CoV2 PCR testing capacity both locally and nationally, and to establish a robust framework for validating new SARS-CoV2 testing.
Usman Arif
Programme Head, National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Usman is the NPIC Programme Head for Digital Deployment, Data, and IT (Information Technology) Services and is responsible in providing strategic leadership and delivery of the NPIC Digital Pathology solution and services, including the technology products and systems, business as usual IT Services, client service functions and IT contract and supplier management.
Spanning a 17+ year career across the Health Care Sector and Local Government sector in Digital and IT, he’s passionate about the implementation of products and services that are built to improve services to patients.
At NPIC Usman directed and led multi-disciplinary teams of technical professionals and expert industry Partners, to design, develop, implement a Single National centrally hosted Digital Pathology Platform, enabling the onboarding of 20 + NHS Trusts nationally, allowing Pathologists to engage, evaluate, and collaborate rapidly and remotely, with transparency and consistency, improving efficiency, productivity and improving direct care to patients.
Usman is now looking to continue to lead and drive the deployment of the NPIC Digital Pathology Solution bringing together innovative technology with sector specific experience to help NPIC deliver against its objectives in forming a true national network for pathology.
Barbara Arroyo
Chief Clinical Information Officer, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Dr Asra Aslam
Research Fellow, University of Leeds and Principal Investigator, Alan Turing Institute
Andrea Astbury
Deputy Director of Strategy & Integration Liverpool Place DIA Programme Director – Cheshire and Mersey ICB
Andrea Astbury has been employed in the NHS for over 20 years and currently divides her time between two roles – Deputy Director of Strategy at NHS Liverpool Place, and Programme Director for Data Into Action across Cheshire & Merseyside. Throughout her time in the NHS she has worked across nearly all settings of care and enjoys working on system redesign and improvement challenges. She is a passionate advocate for the power of linked data in making a real difference to people’s lives.
Andrea has worked with a number of Graphnet products within the Data Into Action programme which has resulted in a broad range of transformational programmes and the creation of a Population Health Management Academy. She has also been part of the team developing a Complex Households methodology and approach within Cheshire & Merseyside, which is designed to improve outcomes and streamline interventions for vulnerable families.
Prof Tony Avery
Professor of Primary Care, Nottingham, National Clinical Director Prescribing, NHS England
He is passionate about ensuring the safe, effective and appropriate use of medicines and has worked in partnership with healthcare professionals and patients over 30 years to drive forward research and policy development in prescribing and patient safety.
He has led a number of major studies investigating the frequency, nature and causes of prescribing safety problems in the NHS. He has also developed effective methods for tackling hazardous prescribing, most notably the pharmacist-led, IT-based intervention called PINCER, which has now been rolled out nationally to general practices in England.
Tony’s work recognises the vital role that medicines have in treating illness and helping people live with long-term conditions, while acknowledging that prescribing of a medicine is not always the best solution. He is committed to ensuring health care professionals and patients have the information and support they need for shared decision making about whether a prescription is needed and, if so, how to balance the effectiveness and safety of medicines alongside the costs to the patient, the NHS and the environment.
Lynne Avrell
Chief Nursing Information Officer, Dorset County Hospital NHS FT
Lynne is an experienced digital nurse leader and is Dorset County Hospital’s first Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO). She has worked within digital services for eight years in a variety of settings and is proficient in leading digital transformation and change management, including system implementation and optimisation to support clinical workflows and improve patient care. Lynne is an advocate for clinical expertise within digital services and the ongoing need to strengthen digital clinical risk management capabilities to support safe care. She is also the lead Clinical Safety Officer (CSO) for her organisation and the co-chair of the South West CSO special interest group.
Lynne is a registered nurse with over 30 years NHS experience covering acute, community and mental health settings, with specialist nursing qualifications in orthopaedics and Infection Prevention and Control and is an Imperial College digital health leadership alumnus currently completing her MSc dissertation.
Helen Balsdon
Chief Nursing Information Officer, NHS England
Helen is Chief Nursing information Officer at NHS England.
Helen’s work seeks to ensure that nursing and midwifery practice is supported by digital technology and data science and that nurses and midwifes are equipped to work and lead in an digitally enabled environment.
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.”
Alongside nursing and midwifery, Helen’s leadership portfolio includes frontline digitisation, digital citizen and maternity and child health.
Zharain Bawa
Greater Manchester Secure Data Environment Product Director, Health Innovation Manchester
Her previous roles included Head of Delivery for National Digital, Data and Transformation Programmes (Digital Homecare, Connected Care Records and Digital Maturity Assessment) within the Transformation Directorate, NHS England.
Zharain is a Ph.D, scientist and data analyst by background with significant experience working in life sciences, genomics and public and population health. She has a deep interest and passion in using healthcare data safely and securely to enable research, benefitting patients and the population.
Fran Beadle
Chief Nursing Information Officer, Digital Health and Care Wales
Currently CNIO at Digital Health and Care Wales where Fran has been instrumental in the introduction and development of nursing and midwifery, national data/information standards, clinical informatics roles in Welsh health boards and trusts in Wales. Throughout her tenure in Wales, Fran has advised and led in the development of nursing documentation standards, policies and guidelines at local and national levels.
Fran’s unique mix of nursing knowledge and technical ability have translated into transformative improvements for patients and clinicians; resulting in Innovation and improvement awards in both the user and patient categories. Fran holds an MSc in Health Informatics alongside her Registered Nurse qualification and has presented at international and local conferences on the subject of clinical informatics.
Currently Chair of the British Computer Society (BCS) nursing committee, Member of the WNMC and Executive Nurse Directors forums and Welsh representative on the 5 Nations Nursing Informatics Group.
Dorothy Bean
Senior Clinical Lead, Digital Clinical Safety Team Transformation Directorate, NHS England
If my early career was predictable, my latter career has been far from.
I took the popular route of staff nurse, to sister, to health visitor, then to nurse specialist and fell
apart a bit.
Health care careers can be tough and being a Children’s Macmillan Nurse for 8
years definitely broke me. I walked away from nursing for 12 months.
The 20 years that followed have rebuilt me as a nurse, leader and mentor in ways I never
thought possible.
I moved down south, took up lecturing, got interested in research and data, went back to the
NHS as a senior nurse manager and then got into digital.
In digital I’ve found my natural home. It’s a place where you can innovate, initiate, do the detail
but also the big picture stuff. You can make a big difference.
I took one such innovation into the NHS Clinical entrepreneurship programme which exposed
my frustration at not fully understanding how information technology systems actually work.
So, I completed a degree level programme on software design. Doing a course so completely
out of my comfort zone was such a revelation because it exposed how I’d been conditioned to
think.
I now enjoy a portfolio career inside and outside the NHS.
Ahmed Binesmael
Senior Improvement Analyst, The Health Foundation
Ahmed’s major research projects focus on technology, data, and AI, with specific interest in innovation, adoption, and attitudes toward the use of technology and data in health care. Prior to joining the Health Foundation, Ahmed was an Economic Analyst and Senior Policy Adviser at the British Medical Association. There, he developed costed policy proposals aimed at influencing government policies and lobbying for recognition of the affordability of doctor-led health policy initiatives, such as through modelling the cost of full pay restoration for doctors. Ahmed’s research and analysis also contributed to other policy areas, including in digital infrastructure, pensions, public health, general practice, and long-COVID.
Markus Bolton
Executive Director, Graphnet Health
Director of Graphnet Health, Markus Bolton has 44 years of experience in the software industry with a specialist focus on healthcare informatics since 1993. Markus was founder and CEO of System C Healthcare from 1983 to early 2022 and has been a director and major shareholder of Graphnet since 2012. During that time Markus has been involved with many aspects of the business including strategy, growth and mergers and acquisitions.
Markus is an enthusiastic supporter of improving health and social care through data and process transformation and as part of that focus is heavily involved in Graphnet’s population health work.
Mike Bracken
Founding Partner, Public Digital
Mike Bracken CBE is a global digital leader who has led wholesale transformations of large institutions in the private and public sector. He helps organisations change their way of working and solve systemic market, societal and macroeconomic challenges. He is best known for leading the global revolution in digital government, taking the UK to #1 in the UN rankings in 2016.
Mike Bracken is a founding partner at Public Digital, a digital change consultancy for institutions with a public mission. He was the founder and executive director of the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) and the UK’s first Government Chief Data Officer.
Mike has led digital operations and transformations in large-scale organisations in the UK and Europe, such as Guardian News & Media and the Co-operative Group. A civic technologist who helped establish MySociety, Mike uses the power of the open Internet to drive systemic change.
He currently advises more than 30 governments and global financial institutions on digital transformation, from Canada and Australia to Argentina, and is currently one of President Macron’s Global Tech Thinkers. He is an honorary professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London. Mike is a partner at the Lisbon Council in Brussels and a Non-Executive Director at Chetwood Bank, a fully licensed UK fintech.
Chris Buckels
Deputy Head of Business Intelligence (Population Health Into Action), Cheshire and Mersey ICB
Chris Buckels is the Deputy Head Of Business Intelligence for Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care Board and leads the Population Health Into Action Team.
His previous roles included Head Of Business Intelligence for Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Deputy Head Of Business Intelligence for Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group.
Chris has more that 23 years’ experience in data analysis, including 20 years’ NHS experience. In his current role, Chris is the ICB’s liaison with Graphnet, as well as leading a team of analysts which supports the ICB’s Data Into Action programme, focussing on using population health analysis to make a measurable difference to the lives of people in Cheshire & Merseyside.
Laura Burrowes
Clinical Development Lead, Digital Health Transformation Service, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust
Laura is the Clinical Development Lead for the Digital Health Transformation Service at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. In this role, she guides like-minded digital nurses to successfully adopt innovative ways to reach out and engage with service users. Laura qualified as a paediatric nurse in 2007, working in an acute paediatric setting before commencing her career in school nursing in 2018, and completing the PGDip in specialist Community Public Health Nursing (SCPHN) in 2020. In her previous role, Laura led on ChatHealth for the School Nursing Team in Manchester, igniting her passion for digital nursing.
Kevin Burton
Consultant Gynaecological Oncologist, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
I am a consultant gynaecology cancer surgeon, working in NHS Greater Glasgow since 2007. I have a long held interest in quality outcomes in cancer care. This has involved work with the Scottish National Colposcopy audit system, Scottish Quality Performance Indicators for gynaecology cancers and Patient reported outcomes projects. As lead for Gynaecological cancers in the West of Scotland I was the involved with an innovative project using M365 and Power Platform technologies to provide a solution for Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) working. I am now the Clinical Lead for MDT Improvement in the West of Scotland, alongside my surgical workload, and our system is being rolled out across all West of Scotland MDT’s.
Dr Nicola Byrne
National Data Guardian for Health and Adult Social care in England
Dr Nicola Byrne has served as the National Data Guardian for health and adult social care in England since March 2021. With over 20 years of experience in mental health, she continues her clinical role as a consultant psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Previously, she held the positions of Deputy Medical Director, Caldicott Guardian, and Chief Clinical Information Officer at the trust.
The National Data Guardian offers independent advice, guidance, and challenge to the government and others on the safe, ethical, and appropriate use of people’s confidential information in health and adult social care. The role’s mission is to uphold trust in a confidential health and care system.
Jacqueline Bzdyk
Head of Service: National Clinical Safety Assurance Service, NHS National Services Scotland
She also leads the Quality Team who complete Medical Device Regulation Clinics and lead on Compliance of Medical Devices, specifically focusing on Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) and ISO 13485. She is a nurse by background, formerly working as an Emergency Nurse in the United States. She has masters degrees in Nursing and Business Administration.
Prof Chris Carlin
Clinical Lead and Consultant Physician, NHS Greater Glasgow
Chris is Clinical Lead and Honorary Professor of Respiratory Innovation in the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, and Clinical Lead for Respiratory Medicine, South Sector NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. His subspecialty, research and innovation work is focused on implementation and evaluation of assistive digital technologies to establish end-end pathway transformation and new service models for patients with COPD, severe respiratory failure and sleep disorders. The West of Scotland Innovation hub provides comprehensive test-bed infrastructure to host collaborations between NHS, academic and commercial partners to co-design, co-develop and co-deliver clinical innovations through from concept to procurement. The hub’s respiratory portfolio DYNAMIC, POLARIS and DYNAMIC-AI projects are Glasgow-developed exemplars which are scaling-up nationally, transforming long-term condition management.
woshealthinnovation
Jacqui Cooper
Chief Nursing Information Officer Health Innovation Manchester & NHS Greater Manchester
I am a registered nurse with a clinical background in neonatal nursing, previously working in Neonatal units across Cheshire and Mersey and for the Neonatal Regional Transport team. Throughout my career I have held many posts ranging from staff nurse, ward manager and matron through to the role of Chief Nursing Informatics Officer. I have been a CNIO in 4 organisations and have supported and led the process of digitising Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health professionals in pre and post Electronic Patient Record go lives and beyond, enabling nurses to 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 my role as Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, I have participated and supported digital programmes for nurses locally, regionally and at national level. I have been 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.
Natalie Cramp
Partner, JMAN Group and Chair Women’s Health, Women in Data
Natalie is a Partner at JMAN Group. She was recently named in the Twenty in Data and Technology 2023 and has been recognized multiple times in the top 100 data professionals. She holds various leadership roles in the data community including Chairing a Women’s Health movement, leading a cross-industry Data Ethics Advisory Board, and being a member of the Mayor’s Data for London Advisory Board. Before JMAN Group, Natalie headed up data consultancy Profusion, overseeing strategic direction, the expansion of its product offering, and the growth of its blue-chip client base.
Natalie also scaled a start-up from £6 million to £30 million in just 18 months and ran above-the-line digital and email marketing campaigns for the Mayor of London to launch a new brand, ‘Team London,’ build and engage a database of 1 million Londoners who would volunteer, and secure London the title of European Volunteering Capital. She was also part of the team that delivered the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Dr Helen Davies
Clinical Lead for Community Integration and PHM, Calderdale ICB
For much of her career she has been a GP trainer and a course organiser and professional GP appraiser. Her leadership and board level experience includes Calderdale CCG, (Calderdale Cares Partnership ICB), where she is the clinical lead for Community Integration and Population Health Management and Digital and is passionate about addressing inequalities.
She has strong interest in leading multi-disciplinary teams and the development of neighbourhood working. She was a PHM facilitator on the NHS England Place Based Development Programme. She also works as a consultant to a number of different digital companies. She is a keen fell runner and horse rider.
Twitter: @HelenDa21136593
Linkedin: Helen Davies
“I became involved in the digitalisation of healthcare due to increasing frustration at the obvious gap between the needs of healthcare and the provision of tech solutions, when these seem to be available and improving so many seemingly less important areas of our lives.”
Chris Day
Clinical Lead for Cyber Operations, NHS England
Chris Day, currently serves as Clinical Lead within Cyber Operations at NHS England. He has worked in the role since August 2022 when it was highlighted that clinical input was an essential requirement within Cyber Operations. He straddles between Cyber and Digital Clinical Informatics to ensure that each area is considered within the opposite function.
Having worked as a Physiotherapist across a range of Trusts for more than a decade, a huge amount of knowledge was gained about how digital ways of working can be done successfully, but also when things go wrong. A significant amount of project management and change management activity has been undertaken within both clinical and digital roles.
Although still practicing as a Physiotherapist, Chris initially became involved in Clinical Informatics when taking up a role as a Clinical Change Manager in 2018, within Digital Services of an Acute Trust. This then progressed to the role of Lead Allied Health Professional for Digital Transformation, which included clinically leading the implementation of an Electronic Health Record.
Within Cyber Operations Chris works on everything from strategy development and ongoing business development to incident management when cyber-attacks emerge within the NHS.
Chris has keen interests in change management within health and social care. How we protect individuals through improvement of support functions that enable: and optimising services to maximise our ability to provide gold standard outputs.
Janet Dodd
Chief Nursing Information Officer, Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
I started my nursing career in Sheffield and specialised in Neonates for 23 years and then became Ward Manager of a Paediatric Surgical Ward. I was seconded to the role of Matron for Digital Technology in December 2021 to support digitisation on the acute site and have recently been appointed as the first CNIO at Sheffield Children’s Hospital which involves responsibility for the development, optimisation, implementation, and clinical safety of the digital systems used across the trust including Community and Mental health.
I have always had an interest in patient information and data, and although I am not an expert in technology, I embrace digital change and the benefits it brings and believe that clinical leadership is paramount for successful transformation.
Mark Edwards
Chief Information Security Officer, Digital Health and Care Wales
Mark recently joined DHCW from the private sector, and has over 30 years experience in the IT and security industry. He founded network and cyber security specialists Capital Network Solutions (CNS) in 1996 and managed and developed it through to acquisition in 2021, providing complex security services to major customers in a wide variety of organisations, including NHS trusts and health boards across England and Wales.
Mike Fell
Executive Director of National Cyber Security Operations, NHS England
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.
Mitchell Fernandez
Deputy Chief Nurse, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
As the Assistant Chief Nurse at St George’s Hospital, Mitchell managed the infection control team and oversaw the nursing, midwifery, and AHP workforce skill mix review and staff deployment during the expansion of the hospital’s intensive care units in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mitchell has served as Deputy Chief Nurse and Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO) at Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, where, together with the CIO and CCIO, he led the implementation of electronic patient records in both acute hospital and community services.
Currently, Mitchell is the Deputy Chief Nurse at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, leading on Quality, Patient Safety, and Clinical Governance. He is the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for PSIRF implementation and is developing a bespoke AI-enabled patient experience tool (QUAIL) in collaboration with AI specialists to drive quality improvement for better staff and patient experiences.
Mitchell is a founding member of the Jabali Men’s Network, a group of senior BAME male nurses in England advising the Chief Nursing Officer for England on equality, diversity, and inclusion. He is also a founding member of the Filipino Senior Nurses Alliance, which united various Filipino associations in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic and was instrumental in developing the alliance’s vision.
Before moving to the UK, Mitchell earned the rank of Fire Inspector and was appointed as regional chief for emergency and rescue services after completing the Public Safety Officer training course for commissioned officers at the Philippines Fire National Training Institute.
Monica Fletcher
Honorary Research Fellow, The Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh
Monica is involved in influencing national and international policies through her activities including membership of the WHO’s Global Alliance Against Respiratory Disease (GARD), the European Respiratory Society, the American Thoracic Society, the European COPD Coalition, and the International Primary Care Respiratory Group. She is an Associate of the Center for Managing Chronic Disease, University of Michigan.
She is also Chair of the UK Inhaler Group, Knowledge Exchange Lead for the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research, and Chair of the European Respiratory Nurses Association (ERNA).
Monica is honoured with an OBE for services to nursing.
Matthew Forest
Associate Director of Transformation, Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust
Matthew is Associate Director of Transformation at BCHC and Programme Director for Integrated Neighbourhood Teams.
Until September 2023, he was the Associate Director of Operations for BCHC, working operationally across the Trust during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to this he was Head of Contracting for BCHC.
He first joined BCHC in 2019 from Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit where he was Senior Contract and Quality Manager.
His career has spanned both provider and commissioning organisations working on operational support, quality assurance and commissioning portfolios.
Dr Malte Gerhold
Director of Innovation and Improvement, The Health Foundation
Cheryl Gowar
Researcher, The King’s Fund
Cheryl Gowar is a researcher in the policy team at The King’s Fund. She works across a range of issues related to health and care and is particularly interested in public health and the structural response to health inequalities. Before joining The King’s Fund, Cheryl was involved in policy and campaigns work for the National AIDS Trust and Disability Rights UK. She was also a member of INVOLVE and has considerable experience in patient and public involvement, and building participation of people with lived experience into the research process. She has a PhD from Rutgers University in the USA.
Jules Gudgeon
National Chief Midwifery Information Officer, NHS England
With over 30 years of midwifery experience, Jules Gudgeon is a key player in advancing digital technology in maternity care, post the 2015 National Maternity Review by Baroness Cumberlege. Leading roles in the NHS Digital Maternity Programme and the creation of the award-winning Digital Midwives Expert Reference Group, now the Digital Maternity Leaders community, showcases her commitment to collaborative efforts in the digital maternity landscape.
As the National Chief Midwifery Information Officer at NHS England, she was a 2023 HSJ Clinical Leader of the Year Award finalist. In 2024, Jules persists in advocating for digital leadership and addressing the maternity digital divide with #FixTheDigitalDivide #DigitalMaternity.
Prof Geoff Hall
Professor of Digital Health, University of Leeds and CCIO, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Tom Hardie
Senior Improvement Fellow, The Health Foundation
Tom leads research on innovation, with a particular focus on technology, data, and AI. He also leads the Foundation’s work on environmental sustainability, including improving the organisation’s footprint and supporting the shift to NHS net zero. He joined the Foundation from NHS England where he was Clinical Policy and Strategy Team Manager, covering maternity and women’s health, and before that Communications and Engagement Lead for the National Maternity Review. He has held a range of other roles at NHS England, the Department of Health and Social care, and several national and international charities.
Prof Joe Harrison
National Director, NHS Digital Channels, NHS England and Chief Executive, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS FT
Ele Harwich
Director, Newmarket Strategy
Ele has deep expertise in digital health with a focus on AI and regulation. She previously worked at the NHS AI Lab where she led on two key reports looking at the evaluation of AI-enabled medical devices, and ways to develop and deploy AI-enabled medical devices across jurisdictions. She is also a member of the BSI.
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.
Jane Hogg
Executive lead and Senior Responsible Officer (SRO), Thames Valley & Surrey Care Records Partnership
Jane Hogg is the Executive lead and Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for one of the most successful large scale shared care record partnerships nationally.
This is a collaborative partnership is across three Integrated Care Systems, over 4 million residents and a multitude of contributing trusts, local authorities and other partners. It takes a population and person-centred approach, uses the latest thinking on population health, evidence-based change and driving improved outcomes, underpinned by the digital systems needed to support them.
Prior to that Jane supported the Frimley system to become one of the leading ICSs nationally, working to help strengthen relationships across health and care and into local communities, to build a shared strategy to take collective responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the local population, and to make best use of how the system spends its money and directs its energy.
Jan Hoogewerf
Head of Health and Care, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
Jan is Head of Health and Care at BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. She joined BCS from the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, where she was instrumental in the set up and early development of the organisation. Prior to that she managed the Health Informatics Unit at the Royal College of Physicians and has worked in health and social care informatics roles for most of her career, both at a local and a national level across all health and care settings.
BCS drives professional standards in informatics and supports the development of digital skills at all career stages, with the aim of achieving an effective and ethical digital workforce. Jan’s priorities in her BCS role are to create opportunities to develop the skills and experience needed by those working in health and social care informatics and to support professionalisation through promoting professional standards and registration.
Dr Paul Jones
CDIO, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Paul is the Chief Digital Information Officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, where he leads a team of 450 digital and information staff. He has held senior, digital roles in the public and private sector over the last twenty-years including CTO for the NHS in England and Group CIO at Serco.
Dr Matt Kearney
Senior Adviser, UCLPartners
Matt is Senior Adviser for Cardiovascular Health at UCLPartners. The focus of the Cardiovascular Health Programme is to transform prediction, detection and management of cardiovascular risk in order to prevent heart attacks and strokes at scale. Current innovations include the award winning UCLPartners Proactive Care Frameworks to transform management of the high-risk conditions for cardiovascular disease, and CVDACTION – a smart data tool for primary care to identify, prioritise and optimise care in people with high-risk conditions.
From 2016-2019, Matt was National Clinical Director for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and led development of the NHS Long Term Plan CVD Prevention Programme. He co-founded and led development of CVDprevent, the national audit for CVD prevention. He also practices as a GP in Shropshire.
Previously Matt worked as advisor to the Department of Health respiratory programme, and was a member of the NICE Public Health Interventions Advisory Committee from 2005 to 2013. He has a master’s degree in public health and is a Fellow of the Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Physicians.
Philippa Kirkpatrick
Chief Digital Information Officer, South East London ICB
Philippa is on the Board of the AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare and is a champion for the safe, ethical, and responsible implementation of AI in health and care.
Caroline Knott
Clinical Safety Officer and Digital Transformation Lead, Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust
Currently serving as the Clinical Safety Officer and Digital Transformation Lead at Kent Community Health, Caroline is at the forefront of integrating technology into healthcare. She is passionate about driving the sustainable use of digital systems, with a particular focus on their impact on staff and patient well-being. Caroline’s unique blend of extensive clinical experience and digital expertise positions her as a valuable voice in the evolving landscape of healthcare technology
Dr Chris Laing
CEO, UCLPartners
As Chief Executive Officer of UCLPartners, Chris leads our work as a health innovation partnership and provides executive oversight of the NHS Innovation Accelerator, working with its co-directors.
He joined UCLPartners in October 2021, initially as Director of our Health Innovation Network and National Director of the NHS Innovation Accelerator, before being appointed as UCLPartners Chief Executive Officer in February 2022.
Chris undertook specialist training in nephrology, critical care and internal medicine, and continues to practise as a consultant nephrologist at University College London and Royal Free Hospitals, where he is also Honorary Associate Professor of Nephrology at the UCL Centre for Nephrology.
He undertook research training in renal disease, genetics and physiology at UCL and INSERM Paris. He remained active in research through clinical trials, health services research and the use of artificial intelligence in predicting acute renal disease.
Previous leadership roles have included Training Director, Clinical Lead for Nephrology and Associate Medical Director of Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. He worked for four years as Divisional Director of Emergency Services in University College London Hospitals where he oversaw the acute care pathway, leading an extensive programme of transformation. In the latter role he also led the UCLH emergency care response during the COVID-19 pandemic. He founded and led London Acute Kidney Injury Network.
Chris has a strong interest in digital health, technology and data science and worked for five years as a senior clinical advisor to DeepMind and Google Health.
Dr Jean Ledger
Head of Research, Adora Digital Health
Jean has a background in academic research and teaching, and was previously Senior Research Fellow at UCL specialising in health service research and evaluation. Prior to joining Adora, Jean worked as Research and Evaluation Lead at NHS England within the Digital First Primary Care and Primary Care Transformation programmes. Jean brings expertise in stakeholder engagement, digital health, NHS policy, evaluation and user research. She is leading a pilot study for Adora across primary care and Adora’s co-design project in Scotland working with NHS organisations. Jean is passionate about improving women’s health by developing evidence based and user-friendly innovations.
Liz Leggott
Project Manager, South Yorkshire Primary Care Workforce & Training Hub
Cheri Lewis
Senior Midwife for Clinical Informatics, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board
Dr Gerald Lip
Clinical Director for Breast Cancer Screening, NHS Grampian and Vice-Chair, British Society of Breast Radiology
He sits on the Royal College of Radiology Informatics committee, on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Doctoral Training for Biomedical AI in Edinburgh University and is a scientific advised to the National Covid Chest Imaging Database.
A graduate of Trinity College Medicine, along with his medical degree he also qualified with an Msc. in Health Informatics and completed his radiology training in Aberdeen. He is an honorary senior clinical lecturer in the University of Aberdeen. Dr Lip has published and spoken on topics nationally and internationally such as patient engagement, innovation in breast imaging techniques quality assurance and safety in breast AI.
Debbie Loke
Executive Chief Digital Information Officer, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS FT
Debbie started in the NHS 20 years ago and is currently the CIO / director of Digital at UHDB. Debbie’s IT career started in the private sector working for a large accounting firm and moving onto Data Warehouse / BI development for IBM, Vodafone and Safaricom. Debbie has successfully delivered several complex-EPR deployments alongside clinical digital projects such as EDRM, electronic prescribing, PACs, RIS and LIMS.
Prof David Lowe
Clinical Director Innovation, University of Glasgow, and Clinical Lead for Health Innovation, CSO Scottish Government
He leads on range of projects including trauma for the STN (thetraumaapp.com), Dynamic COPD (support.nhscopd.scot) and OPERA(early diagnostic heart failure utilising AI). Such projects focus on developing AI/ML clinical decision support by embedding a data driven approach combined with patient co-management into clinical care pathways. David also established the EmQuire research group focusing on data, device and decisions within Emergency Medicine.
Neil Macdonald
Chief Executive, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Neil has been Chief Executive of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust since January 2019, after holding the interim position a year. Prior to this he was part of the Trust Board for 3 years as Chief Operating Officer.
Neil chairs the Buckinghamshire Executive Partnership and is vice-chair of the Health & Wellbeing Board in Buckinghamshire. Neil is also Honorary Professor of Professional Practice for the School of Business at the University of Buckingham, and Trustee of Scannappeal.
Neil started his NHS career in Yorkshire as a National General Management Trainee in 2003, before joining the Trust in 2005. After leaving for a role at the Healthcare Commission and general management positions at Imperial and Guys and St. Thomas’ Trusts, he returned to the organisation in July 2013 as Deputy Chief Operating Officer for the Surgery and Critical Care Division.
Graduating from St. Anne’s College, Oxford with a modern history degree in 2000, Neil subsequently completed an MSc in Healthcare Management from the University of Birmingham.
Dr Sonja Marjanovic
Director (Healthcare Innovation, Industry and Policy), RAND Europe; Senior Research Leader (Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research); and Joint Lead Decide Programme
Dr Sonja Marjanovic is Director of RAND Europe’s portfolio of research in the field of healthcare innovation, industry and policy. Her work provides decision makers with evidence and insights to support innovation and improvement in health and care systems.
She is also a member of the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research, an expert advisor to the NHS England cancer innovation programme, a Trustee of the Nuffield Trust and on the advisory board for the Centre for Healthcare Innovation Research (CHIR) as City, University of London.
Sonja is the RAND Europe lead for Decide, a new rapid evaluation centre focused on technology-enabled remote monitoring in health and care. Funded by the NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) programme, Decide is a partnership between the University of Oxford and RAND Europe. Sonja received her Ph.D. from Judge Business School, Cambridge University.
Ian Mason
Programme Head, National Pathology Imaging Co-operative, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Ian is the NPIC Programme Head for Digital Deployment & Business Services, responsible for delivering a digital pathology solution to NHS Trusts nationally, whilst supporting our partners to embark on digital transformation across pathology. Ian is responsible for managing the relationships with our existing partners and to identify opportunities with new partners to work with NPIC in the future.
Ian has worked in IT delivery in the Healthcare industry for the last 19 years and held various leadership roles covering Programme delivery, Operations and Training Services. Ian has delivered numerous digital transformation projects in clinical environments across Primary Care, Community, Child Health & Acute Care settings. Ian has also helped NHS Digital deliver the Health & Social Care Network which was the largest public sector migration to a new data network, saving the NHS £75m per year.
Ian is now helping to drive forward the clinical implementation of the NPIC digital pathology solution across the country to help NPIC deliver against its objectives in forming a true national network for pathology.
Cate McLaurin
Director, Public Digital
Cate has deep experience in delivering agile, user-centred services within the public sector. Her expertise includes leadership coaching and development, facilitating conversations across organisations and systems, and supporting leaders to be bold and brave in leading change.
At Public Digital, she works across public sector organisations, healthcare companies and charities, including the NHS, Arup, Greenwich Council and the charity Change Grow Live.
Ciara Moore
Unified EPR Programme Director, Mid & South Essex NHS Trust
Currently, Ciara serves as the Nova Program Director, the first of type electronic patient record initiative across three domains (acute community and mental health) at the Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust Hospital and Essex Partnership University Trust Hospital. This groundbreaking programme underscores her belief in digital technology as a pivotal enabler of improved work experiences for staff and enhanced care for patients.
Ciara is dedicated to delivering a program that prioritises people and purpose, demonstrating unwavering commitment to advancing healthcare delivery through digital innovation and strategic transformation. Ciara is also a social entrepreneur, redefining the professional landscape for women over 50, building new narratives that empower women in their encore careers enabling them to thrive with confidence and purpose.
Dr Jessica Morley
Postdoctoral Researcher, Digital Ethics Center, Yale University
Dr. Jessica Morley has worked in NHS data, tech, and AI policy for the past ten years. Originally working in the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care, she transitioned to working full-time in academia in 2019: working for the Bennett Institute of Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford on OpenSAFELY and the Goldacre Review until April 2023.
Now, having completed her PhD “Designing an algorithmically enhanced NHS”, also at the University of Oxford, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale Digital Ethics Center. All Jess’s work focuses on ensuring healthcare systems can capitalise on the opportunities of better use of data, whilst mitigating the ethical harms.
Yih Yng Ng
Director, Digital and Smart Health Office, Centre for Healthcare Innovation, National Healthcare Group Singapore
A/Prof. Ng Yih Yng is the Director of the Digital and Smart Health Office for the Healthcare Innovation (CHI) at the National Healthcare Group (NHG), overseeing the Hospital without Walls Program, Digital Enablement & Adoption, Digital Transformation and the Health Empowered by AI Launchpad (HEAL) initiative, focused on adoption and scaling of artificial intelligence across the NHG.
He is also a faculty in Digital Health & AI with the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKC-SOM), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), as well as the clinical director of the LKC-SOM, NTU World Health Organisation collaborating centre for Digital Health & Health Education.
At the Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Yih Yng is a Senior Consultant, Department of Preventive & Population Medicine as a public health physician and supporting the training of emergency physicians in evidenced based medicine.
His research interests includes resuscitation, emergency medical services, innovation and the adoption of digital health and AI.
Breid O’Brien
Transformation Consultant and Chair of the External Steering Group, Decide
Breid’s main area of interest is the alignment of improvement science and technology to deliver large scale change. Her other area of interest is in the development of a robust evidence base to support and drive this change and ensuring all change improves health equity through a focus on digital inclusion. She currently chairs the Steering Committee for Decide – a 3 year NIHR funded research programme into technology enable remote monitoring, advises software companies working with the NHS, and is a Trustee on the Barnardo’s UK board.
Twitter @breidobrien
Linked In: Breid O’Brien
Chiamaka P. Ojiako
Innovation Lead, East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD)/Health Innovation East Midland (HIEM)
She is equally leading efforts to facilitate secure access to data for research and innovation with the design and implementation of a network-wide approach to data management and governance.
Jillian Owens
National Programme Manager, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust/Health Innovation Network for South London
Jill has extensive experience across public health, including working on national policy for substance misuse and on workforce development. Jill has also been a private company director, and studied and worked in law, bringing these perspectives to innovator support.
Toby Page
Architecture Lead, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust
Architecture Lead, Traverse Digital – providing services on behalf of the Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland Shared Care Record. 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.
Jenny Partridge
Innovation Manager, Health Innovation, Kent Surrey Sussex
Jenny’s mission is to make healthcare work better for patients and staff through innovation. She is an engineer by background, with a particular interest in how digital technology can support better healthcare. Jenny worked for many years in primary care management setting up new services and medical centres, and recognises the huge potential of AI to address service and workload challenges.
Nishali Patel
Clinical Lead, Digital Medicines, Transformation Directorate, NHS England
Her leadership extends beyond her current role, having spearheaded local transformation projects during her time as a Darzi fellow and managing the national COVID-19 Test programme during the pandemic. A shortlisted finalist for the Next Generation Leader at the Women in IT Awards, she brings a blend of frontline clinical experience and strategic digital health expertise to drive impactful change across the NHS.
Alan Payne
Group Product and Engineering Director, The Access Group
Alan is an executive level Digital and Technology leader with over 30 years in Healthcare, Health Insurance, Banking and Capital Markets, bringing digital innovation, vision, knowledge, drive and the ability to deliver globally across multiple businesses and support functions.
He’s held executive technology and engineering leadership positions at Sensyne Health, Aetna International, Nuffield Health, BUPA Merrill Lynch, Oracle and CTO at JPMorganChase.
Alan is now Group Product and Engineering Director for the Health, Support & Care division at the Access Group. Here he is responsible for the overall vision, direction and delivery of the technology for this crucial group of customers, as they aim to meet the twin aspirations of digitisation and integrated health and care.
He also holds an Honorary Professorship at the UCL Faculty of Engineering (Intelligent Systems) and has specific research interests in Digital Health, Artificial Intelligence and Entrepreneurship.
Iolanda Pedrosa
CIO, Whittington Health NHS Trust
Iolanda Pedrosa is the first CIO in the NHS to come from a Nursing Information Officer background. An avid learner across multiple disciplines, she has a nursing degree, an MBA, level 2 of British Sign Language, and is a Mental Health First Aider.
Her experiences of both providing care and being a patient, in the UK and in Portugal, have given her a unique perspective. She is passionate about amplifying patients’ voices in decisions around digital and information technology in the NHS, and creating a supportive culture of wellbeing in the teams that she leads.
Rachel Power
Chief Executive, The Patients Association
Rachel joined the Patients Association as Chief Executive in 2017and has led changes in the charity, resulting in a more engaged membership and an increase in profile for the Patients Association and its goal of embedding patient partnership in the design and delivery of health and care services.
Described by The Times as, “the UK’s foremost patient campaigner”, Rachel is a passionate advocate for patient-centred care. In 2023 she was invited by the English Patient Safety Commissioner to join her advisory group and be a member of the Martha’s Rule working group. She sits on the NHS Assembly and is also a member of the National Data Advisory Group, Personalised Care Institute Steering Group, and NHS England’s Patient Choice Steering Group, among other memberships.
Rachel’s focus is on empowering patients through the provision of information that enables them to be active partners in their care. This is reflected in the Patients Association general election manifesto that provides the next Government with a roadmap of how to ensure access to high quality care and embed patient partnership across health and care services.
Dr Alec Price-Forbes
Chief Clinical Information Officer, NHS England
Alec Price-Forbes joined NHS England as national Chief Clinical Information Officer at the start of October.
Alec is an experienced Consultant Rheumatologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, was previously the Trust’s CCIO and was the NHS’s first system CCIO for Coventry and Warwickshire’s Health and Care System. He has also held roles as Clinical Lead and co-Chair for NHSE’s Digital Blueprinting Steering Group and as CMIO for 3M Healthcare (UK and Ireland).
With a reputation as a compassionate and empathic clinician, he has an established track record of working across care settings to facilitate new ways of working to transform health and care delivery. With extensive experience in strategic planning and quality improvement, he has successfully led many programmes and projects, accelerating and embedding core Digital capabilities. These include the Shared Care Record, consolidating EPR capabilities with a vision for a single EPR, Virtual Health and Care capabilities and a Population Health Management solution. In 2021, he spearheaded the creation of a digitally-enabled Transformation Strategy for Coventry and Warwickshire’s ICS. This emphasised the convergence and standardisation of systems to deliver maximal integration, focusing on citizens and patients and not just care providers.
He is passionate about the role of high quality data, digital technologies and capabilities in enabling us to reimagine health and care services and outcomes in meeting the Quintuple Aim of HealthCare and dedicated to improving patient care by fostering a culture of change and collaboration.
Pavithra Rajendran
NLP & Computer Vision Lead, Senior Data Scientist, Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust
Dr Simon Rang
Consultant Anaesthetist, Lead for Perioperative Medicine, East Kent University Hospitals NHS Trust and Co-Clinical Lead for Perioperative Medicine, South East Region, NHS England.
Dr. Simon Rang is a Consultant Anaesthetist at East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust and serves as the South East Regional Clinical Lead for Perioperative Medicine at NHS England. With a strong focus on improving the perioperative pathway, Dr. Rang works to ensure optimal patient outcomes while enhancing the efficiency and standards of care. He is particularly interested in leveraging digital technology to streamline healthcare data availability, ensuring the right information is accessible at the right time. His work aims to improve the safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of perioperative care across the healthcare system.
Francesca Rees
Lead Digital Midwife, University Hospitals Plymouth
As a doctoral researcher, she explores the impact of electronic health records (EHRs) in maternity care, particularly regarding healthcare inequalities affecting marginalised populations. Her research aims to assess whether EHRs enhance care coordination or exacerbate disparities, while developing frameworks to engage service users effectively in the design of these digital tools, ensuring they deliver equitable care for all.
Dr Charlotte Refsum
Director of Health Policy, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Dr Charlotte Refsum is a trained physician and expert in health policy. Her work focuses on harnessing the power of AI and other technology to drive prevention, create sustainable health systems and achieve health for all.
Working alongside Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir John Bell, her thought leadership contributes significantly to policy discussions of social-care policy, biotechnology and health care in the AI era.
Over the course of her career, Charlotte has worked in 25 countries to support the transformation of health systems globally.
Kaye Reynolds
Lead Digital Health Clinical Safety Officer, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust
Hi! I’m Kaye, a Registered Nurse since 2011. I have worked clinically for over ten years, predominantly as a chemotherapy and palliative care nurse. In October 2021 I became the full time CSO for my organisation, and in June 2024 was promoted to the Lead CSO role. I am currently working towards my MSc in Digital Health (due to complete summer 2025), and I am very passionate about the safe use and introduction of digital systems into the clinical setting.
Patient safety is my priority and increasing awareness about the potential risks and benefits of digital health is imperative. I also run a national network for CSOs to meet online, meeting once a month via Teams. We have just hosted our first in-person collaboration day (26th June 2024) with the amazing team at DrDoctor and their CSO Laura – who is also on the council with us here. I’m really looking forward to being a part of this amazing team of dedicated clinical safety professionals and hope we can form an inclusive, collaborative council, for the benefit of all.
Ben Rigg
Deputy Director of Digital, Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust
Steve Roche
Experienced Occupational Therapist, Clinical Safety Officer, Integrated Health & Care Services: DCSS
Steve Roche is an experienced Occupational Therapist with over 14 years clinical experience in a variety of settings. Steve is an NHS accredited Clinical Safety Officer and digital health leader with a passion for digital transformation, clinical safety, and quality improvement. Prior to his healthcare career, Steve specialised in quality assurance and continuous improvement methodologies in the automotive industry. As the Programme Lead for digital Clinical Safety, Steve utilises the transformative power that digital Clinical Safety can have to ensure Health IT systems and processes are effective, safe, and efficient. These skills and a desire to improve the quality of care, outcomes and experiences for people, their families, and carers is what motivates Steve professionally.
James Rose
Director of Strategic and Industry Partnerships, Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley
Shelly Rose
Associate Director of Nursing – Critical Care, Anaesthetics & Specialist Surgery (CCASS), East Kent University Hospitals NHS Trust. Clinical Nurse Advisor -Perioperative Medicine NHSE SE.
Shelly Rose currently serves as the Associate Director of Nursing for Critical Care, Anaesthetics, and Specialist Surgery at East Kent University Trust. Alongside this role, she is also the Non-Medical Advisor for Anaesthetics and Perioperative Medicine for NHS England in the South East region.
Shelly has been passionate for many years about supporting improvements in the perioperative pathway, ensuring a smooth transition from the point of listing through to discharge planning. She recognises that digital innovations are essential for supporting elective recovery, enhancing the quality of care, improving efficiency, and reducing duplication, all to benefit both patients and healthcare professionals.
Prof Sara Shaw
Professor of Health Policy & Practice, University of Oxford; and Joint Lead, Decide Programme
Haris Shuaib
Head of CSC, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS FT
Haris Shuaib is CEO of Newton’s Tree, a company that delivers an enterprise AI platform to healthcare organisations to help them evaluate, deploy, and monitor 3rd party AI solutions.
Haris is also a healthcare professional and currently 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.
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.
Dr Devesh Sinha
CCIO, Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust
He has strategized, operationalised, and transformed stroke services at BHRUT with the PRIDEWAY leading to a D-rated service to A or B-rated. This service won the BMJ award for 2019 for rapid transformation.
He is interested in clinician-focused digital intervention with population-based data to prevent secondary events, clinically meaningful AI, and data-led intervention in the pathways.
Prof Reecha Sofat
Chair, PRSB, Breckenridge Chair of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Liverpool and Associate Director, BHF Data Science Centre (HDR UK)
Professor Reecha Sofat is Chair of the Professional Records Standards Body. She is also Breckenridge Chair of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool. She practices general internal medicine and is also an Associate Director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre (DSC) which is led by Health Data Research UK (HDRUK).
Reecha was also announced as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in May 2024, recognising her remarkable contribution to advancing biomedical and health sciences, ground-breaking research discoveries and translating developments into benefits for patients and wider society.
Prof Edward St John
Chief Medical Officer, Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon & Honorary Associate Professor, Concentric Health, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust & University of Portsmouth
He has authored numerous publications on digital consent and shared decision making. He is the Partnership Lead of the Innovation Hub for the Royal College of Surgeons (England). He is passionate about healthcare and effective, safe innovation. Amongst other skills he has domain expertise in consent & shared decision making, the evaluation of medical devices and digital health.
Justyna Strzeszynska
CEO and Founder, Joii UK Ltd
Justyna (she/her) has always enjoyed research and problem-solving leading to new ventures. During her school years she operated a milk bar from her mum’s kitchen in Poland. Next, she set up the Bank for Women, dedicated to women’s finances and lastly developed a concept of a commercial brush inspired by the papillae on a cat’s tongue (it’s a long story)!
Justyna started her career in the fast-paced world of finance and investment – she is no stranger to founding businesses. After four years working as a financial advisor, she established Genius Ventures, an angel investment network and turned her attentions to investing in alternative energy projects.
Joii was born out of Justyna’s personal frustration with the period care market. Having suffered with heavy and painful periods most of her adult life, she had been unable to find a product that met her needs and realised just how little innovation there had been in the industry. She decided to bring together her desire for better performance and the need for some honest sustainability in period care. She also established Joii Labs with the ambition to carry out research and strategize better solutions. In fact, this research resulted in multiple patent applications and a desire to bring these advancements to market. The rest, as they say, is history!
Dr Laura Tan
Co-Founder, Avid
Dr. Laura Tan is a Medical Doctor (MBBS BSc) and Co-founder of Avid, where she combines her clinical, technical and academic expertise to build and scale impactful care solutions to shift healthcare to be more preventative, predictive and personalised. Graduating from Imperial College Medical School, she worked across a wide variety of specialties, also securing an Academic Clinical Program with research into wearables, AI and data analytics. After building programming skills in app and web development, she co-founded Avid – a VC backed digital health start up for proactive health action. Dr Laura’s commitment to healthcare innovation is reflected in her participation in Harvard’s Value-Based Healthcare Seminar, the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Program, and the DigitalHealthLondon Bootcamp. She is driven by a mission to redefine proactive healthcare at scale – combining the best of consumer tech and AI-powered risk prediction, with clinical rigour, meaningful outcomes and practical support.
About Avid: Avid actively engages you in protective health activities, driving proactive action to manage chronic disease and reduce health risks through our comprehensive pipeline of programs. Avid applies a targeted, modular program of early intervention, that is highly engaging, to drive a specific outcome improvement, via a combination of accountability health coaching, content and data insights, leveraging AI to scale and augment human expertise: from automated Coach assist, to personalised risk prediction, to engaging AI avatars.
Ming Tang
Chief Data and Analytics Officer, NHS England
Ming has over 20 years’ experience in managing and delivering large scale change involving implementation of new operating models in complex and challenging environments.
She joined the NHS in October 2009, initially leading commissioning support services in the West Midlands as the Managing Director for Healthcare Commissioning Services and then as the Managing Director for South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit.
Ming is currently the Chief Data and Analytics Officer for NHS England responsible for strategic development of data and analytics capability across NHS.
Dr Gareth Thomas
Digital Innovation Director, NHS Greater Manchester & Health Innovation Manchester
Dr Gareth Thomas joined the Greater Manchester health and care system in 2023 as Digital Innovation Director. He joined as part of a joint appointment between Health Innovation Manchester and NHS Greater Manchester.
Gareth’s previous role was Deputy National Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) within the Transformation Directorate at NHS England, where he brought clinical leadership to national policy, strategy, systems liaison, and workforce development initiatives.
He is a Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia and worked as Clinical Director at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. Prior to his national role he was the Group Chief Clinical Information Officer at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust.
Helen Thomas
CEO, Digital Health and Care Wales
Helen has been the CEO of Digital Health & Care Wales since 2021, 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.
Helen also led the organisation through its transition to a Special Health Authority on 1st April 2021, with Digital Health & Care Wales continuing to deliver national digital and data services to NHS Wales.
Helen was named Digital NHS CEO of the year in 2021, and has an MSc in Health Informatics from Swansea University, 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.
Sarah Thomas
Digital Director, New Hospital Programme
Sarah is an experienced digital healthcare leader who is passionate about the power of data and technology to transform outcomes for patients and the working lives of staff across the NHS. She has been Digital Director on the New Hospital Programme since 2020, spearheading the digital ambition to develop, deliver and optimise Intelligent Hospitals.
She has 15 years’ private sector experience specialising in healthcare technology. She has been accountable for senior client partnerships with Trusts, resulting in first of type deployments across the UK. She created and led international executive alignment between UK hospitals and US healthcare systems, shaping digitisation and transformation programmes focused on reducing unwarranted variation in care. She has also managed strategy and deployment of industry leading digital delivery models into large acute providers, resulting in the opening of digitally advanced hospitals in the UK.
Louise Thompson
Founder/CEO, Myfolks Ltd
“Born in Newcastle, Louise Thompson’s first job was at the Freeman Hospital. From there, she became an alumna of Northumbria University School of Law. She went on to complete her MSc at UMIST and became a Certified Company Director by way of examination on behalf of the Institute of Directors, at Warwick Business School. She is also an alumna of Windsor Leadership Trust. Louise is a CEDR-accredited mediator.
Louise spent 25 years in blue chip corporate organisations (EDS, BT, SAP, Accenture, De La Rue, Sopra Steria), applying the legal and commercial wrap to tech solutions and managing the end to end contractual lifecycle of customer agreements including bid submissions. She has been a committee member of BSI’s ART/1 Committee on AI. She is also a hospital governor. She is a speaker and writer.
Most recently, and based on her experience of being in a senior leadership position whilst caring for ageing parents, Louise founded Myfolks. Myfolks (www.myfolks.uk) is the digital platform that sends someone round to an isolated elder to put the kettle on and have a cup of tea and a chat and Mysocialhealth (www.mysocialhealth.uk) which is using AI to delve into identifying and tackling social isolation as a preventative measure before it leads to disease such as dementia, heart disease, stroke and diabetes that are more costly in every sense.
Louise is on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, as a Patient Entrepreneur and Myfolks is supported by the National Innovation Centre for Ageing and Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria. Louise lives in Sussex, with her husband Paul, although her businesses are registered on the banks of the Tyne.”
Katie Thorn
Project Lead, Digital Care Hub
Katie has played a significant role in advocating for and implementing digital solutions in social care. She has been involved in co-hosting the first series of roundtables on the responsible use Generative AI in social care with the Institute of Ethics in AI at Oxford University and the subsequent publication of the Oxford Statement. Her work focuses on ensuring that digital innovations in social care are used ethically and effectively.
Her background includes extensive work with the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA) as a Digital Engagement Manager, where she has contributed to improving technology use in nursing homes. She has also worked in nursing homes as both a carer and in operations.
Katie has been recognised for her work supporting care providers by receiving The Woman in Tech award at the Women Achieving Greatness in Social Care (WAGS) awards (2022) and the NHS England Award in the Public Service Category of the National Cyber Awards (2023).
Dr Sabine van der Veer
Senior Lecturer in Health Informatics, The University of Manchester
Andy Wilkins
Programme Director, Imperial College London
Andy is a UK futurist, speaker, podcaster and founder of FUTURE OF HEALTH – a new think tank and systems convener exploring the long term vision for holistic health in a technology enabled 21st century.
Through the lens of human-centred value creation Andy has undertaken many research, innovation and strategy projects across Health and Care. This includes authoring high profile reports for the UK’s NHS and policy makers on whole systems approaches to the future of Health. Most recently he has been working closely with Suffolk and NE Essex ICS to bring a new futures based approach to whole systems working.
Emma Wills
Researcher, The King’s Fund
Emma Wills is a Researcher at The King’s Fund. She has a background in psychological and mental health research and has worked at an e-health organisation in the Netherlands. Her research has particularly focused on tackling health inequalities and on making health and care more inclusive. She has worked on a range of projects involving patients and the public in research to produce evidence and recommendations grounded in lived experience.
Amelia Yates
Senior Change Manager – Digital Planned Care, NHS South East
I have worked in the NHS for 10 years starting operationally in a hospital managing surgical specialities, before going on to work at a CCG where I worked on improving patient flow and discharges, UEC and on the outpatient improvement programme. I have now been at NHSE for 3 years originally working on the clinical review of standards and then for the last two years as a Senior Change Manager for Digital Planned Care. Primarily I have been focussed on the roll out of patient engagement portals and integration into the NHS App for the South East.
Dr Joe Zhang
Head of Data Science, Science at the London AI Centre and Secure Data Environment