Faculty of Health and Care Inaugural Conference

Helen Thomas, FBCS, LFEDIP, CEO Digital Health and Care Wales

Dan West, Chief Digital Information Officer, Department of Health Northern Ireland

Amita Aggarawal, MBCS, Senior Policy Lead, NHS England

09:00 Refreshments and networking

09:30 Start of conference

16:30 Approx finish

Full agenda to follow

The conference theme is 'Developing the profession to transform the service'. Digital technologies provide opportunities to improve health and care delivery, but we need skilled and qualified professionals to develop and implement technology safely, efficiently and ethically. The professional emphasis must be on realising service improvement, not simply deploying digital tools.

This conference will focus on the realities of how to develop the workforce to advise, lead and support digital transformation.

Learning objectives:

- Understand current and emerging methods and tools for data, knowledge and technology to transform health and care services.

- Consider innovative ways to support professional development and education.

- Reflect on ways to help Boards and other senior leaders recognize technology as vitally important, but not an end in itself.

- Identify networking opportunities with peers, domain experts, innovators and educators.

- Appreciate how to get involved in shaping the BCS Faculty of Health and Care and determining its priorities for developing the profession.

Helen Thomas, FBCS, LFEDIP, 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 NHSWales to adopt data and digital advances at pace and scale. She has worked in the NHS for over 30 years, gaining wide health informatics experience across a number of senior roles, and has spearheaded digital transformation to deliver more effective and safer care. She was named Digital NHS CEO of the year in 2021.

Dan West, Chief Digital Information Officer, Department of Health Northern Ireland

The CDIO post was created in 2019 to bring together strategy, policy, funding, delivery structures, governance, data leadership and digital innovation in an attempt to accelerate positive impact on people's lives in the region. The goal is to help deliver a Health and Care system that is economically sustainable with better care outcomes and safety and improved experiences for citizens and staff. The CDIO post is an Undersecretary / Director General in the Civil Service, and Dan sits on the board of the Department, as well as holding leadership roles in HSC delivery organisations (HSC = Northern Ireland's NHS - noting that Northern Ireland is unique in the UK context in having a fully integrated Health and Social Care system).

During COVID Dan's focus, like many others in the NHS, shifted to delivery - working across teams in public and private sectors to meet the needs of staff and citizens as Northern Ireland reacted to the rapid changes in public health policy. The work resulted in a dozen brand new public facing Digital services. These are cloud hosted, agile delivered, smartphone apps and open, transparent public data analytics capabilities. These technologies and techniques were virtually unheard of in the Health and Care sector in the region. Post pandemic Dan's role has turned core accountabilities of developing a Vision and Strategy for the Digital transformation of Health and Care in the region, establishing the long term investment roadmap and funding commitment, building the right delivery structures to make the journey successful, changing the culture and capabilities around data and information in the sector and building a new innovation architecture to enable academic and private sector Digital innovators to be able to contribute to addressing the challenges in Health and Care in the province. The current public services economic situation provides a challenging backdrop to maintain momentum on transformational digital investments.

Amita Aggarawal, MBCS, Senior Policy Lead, NHS England

Amita is a pharmacist by background and has worked in a variety of roles spanning digital initiatives from implementation of EPMA, to installation of a new hospital robot and roll out of automated medicine cabinets across a system. She has held several national roles too and held leadership positions.

Further speakers to be announced

(Prices stated are inclusive of VAT)

BCS members: £35.00 + eventbrite fees

Non-members: £60.00 + eventbrite fees

A refund, excluding fees, will be issued if a cancellation request is received within 14 days of the booking date or by noon on 25 September 2024, otherwise, name substitutions will be allowed after this date.

Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.

BCS is a membership organisation. If you enjoy this event, please consider joining BCS. You’ll be very welcome. You’ll receive access to many exclusive career development tools, an introduction to a thriving professional community and also help us Make IT Good For Society.

Join BCS today:

https://www.bcs.org/membership/events

For overseas delegates who wish to attend the event, please note that BCS does not issue invitation letters.

COVID-19

BCS is following government guidelines, and we would ask attendees to continue to follow these guidelines:

England: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

Scotland: https://www.gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19/

Wales: https://www.gov.wales/coronavirus

Northern Ireland: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/ireland

THIS EVENT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

BCS Health & Care

Visit https://www.bcs.org/membership-and-registrations/member-communities/bcs-health-and-care/

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Goodenough College, Mecklenburgh Square, London, United Kingdom