CEO of AphA and Director of Health Insights at British Heart Foundation.

Rony has extensive Analytical and Business Intelligence experience, worked with various private and public sector organisations, and over 15 years’ experience within the NHS, he is a Honorary Member of the University of Exeter Medical School. Rony has been named as the Top 100 Most Influential Data Leader in DataIQ, representing the analyst community in this prestigious list.As the Director of Health Insights, Rony is leading the Data and Analytics Function for the British Heart Foundation. In previous roles, Rony led the Analytics team as the Head of Analytics for NHS England, worked as the Assistant Director of Information for the Devon STP, led Informatics teams in Acute, Community and Mental Health Trusts to deliver Business Intelligence, Clinical Systems and Application Development services.

Professor Tony Avery, OBE, is National Clinical Director for Prescribing for NHS England. He is also a GP in Nottingham and Professor of Primary Health Care at the University of Nottingham.

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.

Dr Anwar Alhaq, is the Genomics Programme Director at King’s College Hospital, London, and a board member of the South East Genomics Laboratory Hub/Genomics Medicine Service Alliance. He is the co-director of the AI/Cogstack programme at King’s and is currently one of the principal investigators in NHS England’s Networks of Excellence in AI.

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.

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.

Sarah has over 18 years’ experience of healthcare data and analysis. She is passionate about promoting lifelong learning. Sarah has helped to create the Analyst X community of 19,000 data professionals, where she is the work stream lead for Communities, Networks and Learning.

She is co-creator of the Analytical Learning Exchange; a free online resource that provides analytical and technical learning material to help analysts assess and broaden their skill base. Sarah leads on the professionalisation of data and analytics workstream across Health and Care in England and the development of a National Competency Framework for data professionals.

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.

Kate has experience in a wide range of analytical roles throughout the NHS over 17 years, moving to develop and head up the British Heart Foundation’s Health Insights team in 2019.  She is currently Director of Evaluation and Insight at UCLPartners.

 

Kate has extensive experience of working in many different health and care contexts, and supporting the development of analytical solutions to complex problems.  She enjoys helping people make sense of the evidence when it comes to evaluation, and developing effective and meaningful measurement and modelling approaches that help close the gap between our data assets and high quality decision making.

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.
www.woshealthinnovation.scot

Monica Fletcher is the former Chief Executive of Education for Health.

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 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.

Monica is honoured with an OBE for services to nursing.

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.

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.

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.

Shevon is a Data Architect at NHSBSA and Branch Lead for AphA NENC. He champions collaboration, knowledge sharing, and standardisation in NHS Data and Analytics. A supporter of AphA, FEDIP, NCF, and SDNs, Shevon advocates for professionalisation, mentorship, and career development, especially for ethnic minorities. Embracing Servant Leadership, he focuses on helping others grow.

Selected for the Future Digital Leader Bursary Programme, Shevon aspires to be a Chief Analytics Officer. At AphA Conference 2024, he will chair a panel on professional development and career paths, dedicating his achievements to his late mother.

After graduating from Newcastle University in 1990, Andrew joined the NHS with Northern Regional Health Authority. He has over 30 years’ experience of data and analysis in both health and local authority.

He led on the AnalystX Observatory State of the Nation Survey 2023, helping build a clearer picture of the data workforce in health and social care.  Passionate about promoting lifelong learning in analytics, he now leads on the workstream aligning learning to the competencies within the National Competency Framework for data professionals.

Dr Gerald Lip is the Clinical Director for breast screening in the North East of Scotland and the Chief Investigator in the mammography artificial intelligence project in the Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Diagnostics in Scotland.

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.

Professor David J Lowe is Clinical Director Innovation University of Glasgow, Emergency Consultant at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow and Clinical Lead for Health Innovation for Scottish Government. David has significant experience of creating the infrastructure and conditions to develop innovative devices, services and solutions with a range of industry and academic partners both UK and worldwide. He is clinical lead for a number of projects with DHVL and previously iCAIRD including ensemble based AI techniques for COVID, osteoporosis as well as supporting evaluation and development of AI solutions across a range of imaging modalities. 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.

Philip Nkwam is an AI and Data specialist dedicated to transforming digital health through innovative technology. With extensive experience in medical imaging, he has played a key role in developing deep learning algorithms, collaborating with institutions like St Cyril Cancer Treatment Foundation and MIT. Philip’s work focuses on adapting AI models to the unique challenges of Black populations especially from Sub-Saharan Africa, ensuring they are effective and accessible across diverse populations.

Leading teams in high-impact projects, such as the BRATS Africa Hackathon, Philip has demonstrated his expertise in advanced architectures like Vision Transformers and U-Net for glioma segmentation. His leadership resulted in a 0.93 Dice score in 3D MRI brain tumor segmentation, highlighting his ability to drive significant advancements in healthcare AI.

Driven by a personal commitment to democratize healthcare, Philip is passionate about making advanced diagnostic tools accessible to underserved populations. His strong foundation in quantitative methods and statistical analysis, coupled with his experience in medical software, positions him as a key innovator at the intersection of AI and digital health. A trusted collaborator and effective communicator, Philip is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of AI to improve global healthcare.

AphA President and Director at the Health Economics Unit

Andi is a Health Economist and the Director of the Health Economics Unit, an NHS organization that supports health & care organisations locally, regionally and nationally, providing expertise in economics, population health, analytics & evaluations.

Andi is particularly interested in population health analytics especially how to best address health inequalities and the concept of impactibility modelling and is researching this for his PhD at Imperial College London. He is also a Senior Advisor for NHS England on Population Health Management in the Data and Analytics Directorate working with and advising STPs and ICSs across the country.

Amaka is a lawyer and health policy professional with experience in the public, non-profit, and international development sectors. She leads the Innovation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Forum in partnership with Health Innovation East Midlands (HIEM) and works with a wide range of imaging stakeholders in the discovery, development, deployment, and sustainability of innovation.

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.

With over a decade of experience in General Practice, Managing Director at Primary Care Analytics and a Chief Information Officer for Herefordshire General Practice, leading and advising on digital, data, and technology initiatives across Primary Care, Secondary Care, and Integrated Care Systems. A proven track record of delivering innovative and impactful solutions that enhance population health management, operational efficiency, and clinical quality.

Emmanuel is a graduate from Warwick University with five years of professional experience in digital healthcare. He currently leads as Research Manager at Digital Health, focusing on advancing the widely-used Intelligence product within the NHS and among software suppliers. Alongside this, he spearheads the development of an NHS-oriented AI Chatbot for the Digital Health Intelligence service.

Dr Dom Pimenta, MBBS MRCP, is the co-founder and CEO of TORTUS. TORTUS is a London-based startup building a generative AI interface (O.S.L.E.R) for primary and secondary care clinicians to prevent cognitive overload and improve patient outcomes.

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!

Emma is a data and analytics professional with over 15 years of experience in a range of NHS organisations across the South East of England.  Currently a Data and Analytics Coach at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, she has designed and implemented an award-winning data literacy program for the wider workforce.

Emma is a deputy branch lead for AphA London and her previous roles include Health Care Assistant and Head of Performance and BI.  She is passionate about de-mystifying the world of data and supporting the development and professionalisation of the health and social care analytics workforce.

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.

Katie Thorn is a pivotal figure in digital transformation within the adult social care sector. She serves as the Project Manager for the Digital Care Hub, formerly known as Digital Social Care. For social care providers, by social care providers, the Digital Care Hub provides free guidance and support to care organisations on technology, data protection and cyber security. This initiative is supported by the Care Provider Alliance, NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care.
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).

Nell is an Improvement Fellow at the Health Foundation where she leads major research projects on the use of new technologies and data analytics to improve healthcare, specialising in artificial intelligence.

Nell has worked in health care for over a decade. She was previously the Senior Delivery and Business Manager for the Leeds Academic Health Partnership where she managed programmes across tech innovation and health data in collaboration with NHS providers and commissioners, universities, the local authority, and health innovation network.

Nell received a distinction in her MA Social Research from the University of Leeds where she focussed on the construction of policy narratives regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the health service.

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.

Emma’s career in healthcare Informatics spans over 20 years but her passion lies in analytics. As Director of Information & Business Intelligence at The Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, her focus has been the development of a data-driven culture, providing insight that supports the ever-changing requirements of a complex healthcare organisation and the improvement of services for patients.

Emma has taken this focus forward into her new role as Programme Director, leading on data improvement and data literacy for her organisation.

As AphA’s Director of Professional Development and a registered Leading Practitioner with Fed-IP, Emma is committed to professionalising analytics and ensuring analysts across the health and care spectrum are respected for their knowledge and skills, and valued as key players in the improvement of healthcare for all.

West Intelligence and Insights Team. Prior to that he worked for a mental health provider for 7 years and in management information for the police and child protection for around 5 years.

Simon completed his MSc in Healthcare Data Science and very keen in seeing how to embed robust statistics and modern data science in to more day to day analytics, he firmly believes we should be bringing these into the operational day job to support data driven decisions.

Having been using R for around 5 years he loves stumbling on a library that does exactly what he needs. He is  reasonable at SQL and get by in Python. A NHSR community fellow, SPC champion and was lead for the APHA SW region for around 3 years. 

Intensive care doctor and Head of Data Science at the London AI Centre and Secure Data Environment, leading on implementation of data and AI technologies across the OneLondon ecosystem. Prior experience across the NHS, academia, and life sciences sectors. He is a researcher at the Institute of Global Health Innovation in data-centric approaches to AI.