About this Event
You are warmly welcomed to attend the inaugural symposium of Professors Owase Jeelani and Michelle Heys.
This is a hybrid event held in the Kennedy Lecture Theatre , UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health & online via Zoom.
Link to join via Zoom: will be received nearer the date following registration.
Programme:
2.30pm – 3.00pm Tea/coffee on the Balcony
3.00-4.00pm Professor Owase Jeelani, Professor of Paediatric Neurosurgery
Title: ‘Saving the world – one twin at a time’.
4.00-4.30pm Tea/coffee on the Balcony
4.30-5.30pm Professor Michelle Heys, Professor of Global Child Health
Title: ‘'In the pursuit of equity: don’t get mad, get even.’
5.30pm Drinks reception in the Winter Garden
RSVP Reserve a place by registering via Eventbrite.
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Professor Owase Jeelani
Professor of Paediatric Neurosurgery
‘Saving the world – one twin at a time’
Abstract
I aim to speak about our research within the FaceValue group, the development of the Spring assisted distraction systems, prediction modelling, AI and how it has impacted clinical practice.
The lecture will then follow this journey into how we set up and run a global health care service for Craniopagus Twins. A story of science and surgery set within the complexities of global healthcare.
The topics will be ‘packaged’ within my own life journey weaving in various personal and professional strands.
Biography
Professor Owase Jeelani, BMedSci, MBBS, MBA, MPhil (Medical Law), FRCS is a World-renowned Paediatric Neurosurgeon, inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. The Time Magazine ranked him as among the top 100 surgeons in the UK in 2011 and top 100 paediatric specialists in the UK in 2012. His endeavours are designed around optimal prediction algorithms which increase efficiency, limit errors and improve outcomes.
Owase Jeelani is Professor of Paediatric Neurosurgery at the Institute of Child Health at University College London (UCL). Combining medical and entrepreneurial aptitude, Owase Jeelani is a Principal Investigator of FaceValue, a UCL-based research team of doctors, scientists, and biomedical engineers that design surgical devices and machine-learning algorithms to predict and improve surgical outcomes; the inventor of CranioXpand, a cranial distractor system; and part of the team behind Klay BioTech; An AI-driven, 3D VR platform, The Klay Platform uses proprietary hardware and software to plan, visualise, develop, and execute procedures. It offers an unprecedented level of predictability for craniofacial surgeries, patient control, and informed consent.
He has worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) part-time since 2000 and full-time since 2009 and he undertakes some 200 paediatric neurosurgical and craniofacial surgeries annually. His sub speciality interests are Craniofacial Reconstructive Surgery, Craniopagus Separation Surgery, Surgery for Brain Tumours and Cerebrospinal Fluid and Intracranial Pressure Pathologies.
Professor Jeelani was Head of the Department of Neurosurgery at GOSH from 2012 – 2018 and currently Heads the Craniofacial Service here. He holds an BMedSci and an MBBS from the University of Nottingham. He also holds an MPhil in Medical Law from the University of Glasgow, studying medical ethics and the legal dimension of practising medicine on the internet, and an MBA from INSEAD, studying in France, Singapore, and the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia.
Professor Jeelani is the Founder of Gemini Untwined, a global charity dedicated to the research and treatment of craniopagus twins and other complex craniofacial and neurosurgical conditions. He has received international recognition for separating craniopagus twins, including Sudanese twins Rital and Ritag in 2011 and then, through Gemini Untwined, Pakistani twins Safa and Marwa in 2019 (BBC News coverage of Safa and Marwa ranked as the 6th most read news item globally in 2019), Turkish twins, Yigit and Derman in 2020, Israeli twins in 2021 and a set of Brazilian Twins in 2022 and 2023 and two further set currently.
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Professor Mchelle Heys
Professor of Global Child Health
‘In the pursuit of equity: don’t get mad, get even.’
Abstract
With insights and tales from Saudi Arabia, UK, Nepal, Hong Kong, Malawi, Zimbabwe and beyond Michelle will reflect on pivotal moments that have shaped her personal, clinical, and academic journey thus far. While she likes to think of herself as Miss Rabbit from Peppa Pig, she is secretly afraid she appears more like Michelle Yeoh’s character in Everything Everywhere all at Once. She would like to take this opportunity to share her varied universe with you and her profound gratitude for all who have supported her in this journey.
Michelle’s mission has always been to advance equity for infants, children, and young people. Her research started with small-scale exploration of the experience of healthcare and use of routine health data. She showed that the “how” we deliver care is often as -- or more -- important than “what” we deliver. Also, routine data can be used to shape health services: but how and what data we gather is vitally important. Michelle went on to interrogate large, linked data sets from Chinese adolescents and elders showing how early life exposures are a key driver for health in adulthood - but also found the head and the heart weren’t always in agreement. Some exposures appeared to result in worse cardiovascular outcomes, but better cognition and vice versa. Whilst she thoroughly enjoyed the analysis, she increasingly found herself asking “so what can we do?” and started on her current journey of developing, adapting and testing health systems and public health interventions to reduce childhood inequity.
Over the last 10 years she has led the development of a digital learning health system for newborn care - Neotree - that uses data captured at the cot side to guide and educate nurses and doctors in Malawi and Zimbabwe, helping them make better clinical decisions, showing that better data and better decisions save lives. In the UK she develops and tests interventions to strengthen health systems and mitigate adverse childhood experiences such as poverty seeking to rapidly translate evidence from low-income countries to the NHS and to explore global health within the local context. Giving a voice to those experiencing care and ensuring those voices drive health systems change has remained core to her work.
Biography
Michelle Heys is an NIHR Global Health Research Professor and UCL Professor of Global Child Health within the department of Population Policy and Practice at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London. She is also an honorary Consultant Community Paediatrician, East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT), Newham, where she mainly cares for children and young people with complex neurodisability. She previously co-led community services in ELFT as joint-Associate Clinical Director and was service lead for Research and Population Health and her work has contributed to the ELFT “Marmot Trust” initiative. She is co-lead for the Global Health Strategy for GOSH ICH and chair of the Strategic Research Group for the British Association of Community Child Health - both of these posts aim to build capacity in global and community child health research respectively.
Michelle has an iBSc in Behavioural Sciences and BMBS in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Nottingham, Medical School, receiving distinctions in both Paediatrics and Surgery and the John Moire Prize for best overall clinical performance. She is fully trained in Paediatrics (UK) and part trained in Public Health (UK and Hong Kong), with a Masters in Public Health Practice from the University of Hong Kong for which she received distinctions and the Tony Hedley Prize for best overall performance. Her MD(Res) was in life course epidemiology also from the University of Hong Kong.
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In the Chair: Professor Helen Cross, Director and Professor of Child Health, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health.
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RSVP Reserve a place by registering via Eventbrite.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Hybrid event: Kennedy Lecture Theatre | UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health & Online via Zoom, 30 Guilford Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
