Faculty of Health and Care Conference 2026
Please join our third annual conference featuring keynote addresses, panel sessions, scientific abstracts and posters, and practical workshops. Our theme this year is 'Collaborate, Learn and Professionalise'.
Conference date: Tuesday 30th June 2026
Venue: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, Ground Floor, 25 Copthall Avenue, London, EC2R 7BP
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Description |
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09:00 |
Welcome: Will Smart, Chair, BCS Faculty of Health and Care and Andrew Griffiths, CEO, FEDIP Opening Keynote: Preparing the NHS Health Informatics Workforce for Healthcare AI. Speakers: James Freed, Deputy Director, NHS Digital Academy. Hatim Abdulhussein, CEO, Health Innovation Network Kent, Surrey and Sussex Chair: Will Smart, Chair BCS Faculty of Health and Care |
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09.45 |
Digital professionalism – Future Direction. Speakers: Shana Vijayan, Asst Director for the Digital Profession, NHS England. Helen Thomas, CEO, Digital Health and Care Wales. Chair: Andrew Griffiths, CEO, FEDIP. |
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10:45 |
Networking Coffee & Sponsor Showcase |
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11:15 |
e-PRaSE - electronic prescribing risk and safety evaluation project. Results of a project looking at how ePMA systems are being configured to mitigate medication related error Speakers: Neil Watson, Director of Innovation, Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, Jamie Coleman, Associate Medical Director at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Ann Slee, PCS Health Ltd
Chair: Marina Copping, Consultant Clinical Informatician Public Services Delivery Scotland |
openOutcomes an openEHR native digital PROMs and PREMs platform Digital Legacy in Palliative Care. Findings of a study exploring health care professional, patient and relatives perspectives and experiences of digital legacy. Sarah Stanley, Marie Curie Research Nurse. |
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12:00 |
EPR implementation – improving clinical workflows and working in partnership with other trusts Chair: Will Smart, Chair BCS Faculty of Health and Care |
Cogstack – an overview of an AI driven clinical text analytics platform and examples of its use. Speakers: Dr Tom Searle, Research Fellow, Kings College London and Aleksandra Foy, NLP workstream lead, Cogstack Chair: Elly Andrikopoulou, Communications and Publications Lead, BCS Faculty of Health and Care |
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12:30 |
Networking Lunch & Sponsor Showcase |
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13:30 |
Podium Presentations: Best 5 informatics research project abstracts selected for podium presentation Chair: Elly Andrikopoulou, Communications and Publications Lead, BCS Faculty of Health and Care |
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14.00 |
AI Risk Management and Governance Cyber Security – practical guidance on keeping safe Speaker: Mark Dimock, Regional Cyber Security Lead, East of England Chair: Marina Copping, Consultant Clinical Informatician Public Services Delivery Scotland |
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14:45 |
Networking Coffee & Sponsor Showcase |
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| 15:15 |
Decentralizing Clinical Intelligence: How Small Language Models and Edge AI Solve the Healthcare Regulatory Puzzle This talk explores how the future of healthcare AI is decentralized, driven by ecosystems of specialized AI agents built on Small Language Models (SLMs) that act as reasoning and retrieval engines rather than static knowledge bases. BMJ Health and Care Informatics Journal Chair: Elly Andrikopoulou, Communications and Publications Lead, BCS Faculty of Health and Care |
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16.00 |
Advancing Health Tech a National to Local Discussion NICE MedTech Assessment Process: Thomas Slater, Director of Health Technology and Advice, NICE Untangling AI Safety: Securing Autonomous Processes in Clinical Settings: Marcela Vizcaychipi, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Chair: Justin Whatling, Independent and member of BCS Academy of Computing Board |
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16:50 |
Closing remarks – Will Smart, Chair, BCS Faculty of Health and Care |
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17:00 |
Conference Reception |
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19:00 |
Event close |
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Shana Vijayan
Shana Vijayan is the Assistant Director for the Digital Profession at NHS England, where she is responsible for the development of an NHS wide digital and data profession. She has an extensive background in health management, strategy and innovation in complex and varied environments.
She champions a culture which is open and transparent. Her particular interest is in how NHS organisations can be more effective. She is concerned with how public health services are held to account and the tools and technologies that shape healthcare.
Shana is a trustee of The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) based at Bletchley. She is also a trustee of Rosetrees Trust, a charitable foundation that funds cutting edge medical research, and serves as an expert panel member for the Vivensa Foundation, which supports pioneering science and radical social innovation to enable healthy ageing.
She holds a PhD from UCL and is a former Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
James Freed
James Freed leads the NHS Digital Academy, an organisation dedicated to supporting teams in health and care to deliver more value tomorrow than they did today. He was the last Chief Digital and Information Officer for Health Education England and his career has taken him through Cancer Research, Change Management and Standards development.
In 2017 James was voted by peers as one of the top 100 influencers globally in Health IT as part of the #HIT100 twitter campaign. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a FedIP accredited Leading Practitioner and a Chartered Health CIO accredited through CHIME. In 2025 James was awarded BAME Ally of the Year across health and care.
Tom Searle
Tom Searle is the CEO and Co-Founder of CogStack, a leading health-tech spinout that utilizes AI and NLP to unlock clinically relevant data for healthcare providers. With a PhD in Clinical NLP and dual roles as an Associate Professor at UCL and Translational Research Director at KCL, they bring a deep expertise in transforming fragmented, complex datasets into actionable insights. Having previously managed global development teams in financial services, Tom combines academic rigour with industrial-scale engineering experience, offering the strategic technical oversight essential for data-driven climate initiatives and organisational scaling.
Helen Thomas
Helen has been the CEO of Digital Health & Care Wales since 2021, leading the organisation’s impressive response to the Covid-19 pandemic, supporting NHSWales to adopt data and digital advances at pace and scale. Helen also led the organisation through its transition to a Special Health Authority on April 1st 2021, with Digital Health and Care Wales continuing to deliver national digital and data services to NHS Wales.
Helen has worked in the NHS for over 30 years, initially working in finance, moving into health information in 2000. She has gained wide health informatics experience across a number of senior roles over the last 20 years, and has spearheaded digital transformation to deliver more effective and safer care. Helen was named Digital NHS CEO of the year in 2021 and has an MSc in Health Informatics from Swansea University. She 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.
In her time as CEO, Helen has made considerable ground in leading DHCW, not just to deliver major digital and data services to NHS partners, but to become a supportive and inclusive organisation and is passionate about being a role model for staff. Helen recognises the importance of supporting communities and ensuring that no one is left behind by digital transformation. As part of her commitment to this, Helen chairs DHCW’s digital inclusion group which looks at how the organisation works with partners to support those who might not have the skills or access to benefit from digital change.
Professor Hatim Abdulhussein
Professor Hatim Abdulhussein is the Chief Executive Officer for Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex and alongside this role, he continues to practice as a General Practitioner. 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.
He co-founded the ‘Topol Programme for Digital Health Fellowships’ launched by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in 2019 and later became the National Clinical Lead for AI and Digital Workforce at NHS England providing clinical leadership to the NHS Digital Academy and the NHS AI Lab as well as leading and co-authoring on AI in the NHS’s historic Long Term Workforce Plan.
Thomas Slater
Director of Health Technology and Advice
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
Thomas is a commercial and healthcare leader bringing over 15 years' experience in fields such as innovation, investment, healthcare, technology and supply/market transformation.
Before joining NICE, Thomas was the director of commercial for NHS England and prior to that, director of commercial strategy & solutioning for NHS Digital, leading his teams in many of the recent technology transformations the NHS has delivered over the last decade. He originally joined the NHS in 2010 in Salford Royal NHSFT and then enjoyed regional leadership roles in Commercial & Procurement across the Northwest.
Thomas has an MBA from Birmingham University and supports multiple academic and professional development programmes like NHS Digital Academy, HCSA Future Leaders and the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP).
His main interests are transformative healthcare design and delivery, delivering true value to the UK population and helping teams develop the cultures for trust and success.
Kanthan Theivendran
Kanthan is a full-time practicing Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon working in the NHS. He is a digital health leader recently successfully completed the NHS England Digital Health Leadership Program Cohort 7 from Imperial College London and is a clinical informatician working across the intersection of direct clinical care and utilising and deploying digital technology to improve patient outcomes.
Kanthan is the clinical lead for openOutcomes a digital PROMs & PREMs platform actively deployed in the NHS. Kanthan is passionate about open standards in healthcare data and semantic interoperability and sits on the openEHR International Clinical Program Board and is the Co-Chair of openEHRUK. He also sits on the Hospital R&D committee and is extensively involved in research as a Principle Investigator on NIHR clinical trials.
Marcela Vizcaychipi
Dr Marcela P. Vizcaychipi is a Consultant in Anaesthesia & Intensive Care Medicine at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and serves as Chief Clinical Information Officer and Clinical Safety Officer across CWFT and THH.
She is an IEEE CertifAIEd™ Authorised Lead Assessor (AI Ethics) and completed the MIT executive professional programme for Chief Digital Officers.
At the Faculty of Health and Care conference, she will share practical experience of deploying a fully automated AI healthcare application at scale, with a focus on clinical safety and governance.
Dean Mawson
Dean Mawson has supported the Clinical Risk Management movement in the NHS working in collaboration with NHS Digital and prominent Clinical leaders within the digital health sector for over 19 years. Dean has contributed his clinical experience and knowledge base to NHS Clinical Safety & Risk Management Systems and worked at the highest level to ensure core clinical safety principles are embedded in the practice of all organisational team members. These will be the foundational principles in which health informatics will be led throughout the next ten years or more. Dean is now the Clinical Director of his own company
providing ethical advisory services to the health industry. DPM Digital Health Consultancy Ltd was formed in 2018.
For 11 years of this Dean worked for a leading digital health manufacturer as a Clinical Safety Officer/Clinical Specialist accredited through NHS Digital. His NHS clinical experience spans roles as a Staff Nurse in Trauma and Orthopaedics, Charge Nurse, Ward Manager, Admissions Coordinator, and Care Pathway Facilitator. Dean has an in-depth understanding first-hand of the clinical pressures and risk management requirements of working in the NHS. The focus of his work on the digital health manufacturer side has been making sure all systems are risk averse and comply with the national safety standards DCB0129/DCB0160. He is passionate about patient safety and an expert in his domain.
Dean is currently a Fellow of the British Computer Society (Institute of Chartered IT Professionals) and was a previous member of the Clinical Safety Special Interest Group Leadership Committee as part of this role. He has recently undertaken a post graduate course in Artificial Intelligence Concepts: Practical Applications at the University of Oxford to further his competencies and compound his existing AI knowledge and skill sets in relation to Risk Management and has established courses in AI Risk Management and Governance in support of the design and deployment of AI technologies.
Bart de Witte
Bart de Witte is the Founder and CEO of Isaree, a Berlin-based clinical AI platform dedicated to decentralized, open-source, and privacy-protecting edge AI. With over two decades of experience in digital health, including prior leadership and executive positions at tech giants SAP and IBM, Bart is a leading advocate for the democratization of medical AI. Since 2018, he has championed the strategic and ethical advantages of open-source, specialized AI over monolithic, centralized systems, a position validated by subsequent market events. Through Isaree, he is building the platform and open standards needed to orchestrate certified clinical agents, freeing clinicians from bureaucratic burdens while ensuring strict regulatory compliance and data sovereignty.
Hear from national and international speakers in a CPD awarded programme and join us after the event for networking in an informal drinks reception.
Please register for your ticket here: BCS Third Faculty of Health and Care Conference 2026.
