Helen Puttick is the Scottish Health Correspondent for The Times. She has covered health news in Scotland for almost 20 years, working for The Herald before moving to The Times in 2017. She has been nominated for a number of awards and regularly appears as an expert commentator on broadcast media.

Richard McCallum is the Director of Health and Social Care Finance, Digital and Governance at the Scottish Government where he has responsibility for the effective stewardship of the £19 billion Health and Social Care Portfolio budget.  His finance career began with KPMG, where he worked in the External and Internal Audit Functions.  Since 2010 he has worked at the Scottish Government in various roles, including a two year period heading the financial services department at NHS Fife. 

Background briefing

• Began her career at NHS in 1982 as a student nurse
• Spent 14 years as a frontline nurse before moving into NHS management, leading major change programmes across health and social care.
• Served as Director of Health Protection Scotland, Director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS), Director of Strategy, Performance and Service Transformation, and appointed CEO of NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) in April 2021.

Mary Morgan’s leadership approach places a high emphasis on emotional intelligence, understanding organisational culture and strategy, understanding one’s impact on others, and aligning personal values with organisational culture.

Mary is known for being an approachable leader who enjoys interacting with colleagues at all levels of the organisation. Her leadership skills and ability to successfully deliver complex programmes and positive transformation has long been recognised, with Mary having been seconded to multiple high-profile programmes.

In her rare free time, Mary enjoys Zumba, reading, travelling and supporting the work of the Scottish Centre For Children With Motor Impairments (SCCMI).

“Passionate about public service, I joined the SCCMI Board to give something back to the wider community – but I receive much more seeing the Centre and its staff supporting some very special children and their families and playing a part in the governance of the service.”

Professor Dominiczak is a world-leading cardiovascular scientist and clinical academic. She has published extensively in top peer-reviewed journals (over 500 publications, an h-index of 118). Between 2010 and 2020 she was Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Anna developed new clinical academic campus at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, where she led a triple helix partnership between academia, the NHS and industry to accelerate innovation, maximize patient benefits and economic growth.

Dame Anna is a member of several editorial boards and, from 2012 – 2022, was Editor-in-Chief of Hypertension, journal of the American Heart Association, currently she is Editor-in Chief of Precision Medicine, a new Prism journal of the Cambridge Press.

In March 2020, Anna led the establishment of Lighthouse Laboratory in Glasgow to provide rapid Covid–19 diagnostics, and then was asked to become Director of Laboratories at the UK Department of Health and Social Care to lead all 10 Lighthouse Laboratories across the UK, the role she fulfilled until 2022.

In July 2022 she was appointed as a Chief Scientist (Health) for the Scottish Government. She works with the Chief Scientist Office to formulate and implement research and innovation strategy with a focus on transformative innovations that improve health of Scottish communities

Sheila is the President of techUK and Chief Operating Officer and Executive Board Director of FDM Group. She has over 30 years’ experience in both the public and private IT sectors. Sheila played an integral role in the Group’s flotation on AIM in 2005 and was a key instigator of the management buy-out of the Group in 2010 and its subsequent listing onto the main FTSE Market in June 2014 and more recent entry into the FTSE 250.

Sheila’s experience and knowledge of the sector has been crucial in driving the Group’s global expansion programme. She is fully committed to promoting all forms of diversity, especially women in Tech and spearheads FDM’s Women in IT campaign and FDM’s ‘Getting Back to Business‘ programme, aimed at providing opportunities for women looking to return to the workplace. She is frequently called to advise government committees on various issues. Most recently she gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee on bridging the digital skills gap.

She has won numerous awards over many years for her services to the Tech industry, including a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by ‘Scottish Women In Tech’ and was most recently recognised in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List, by being awarded ‘Commander of the Order of The British Empire’ for services to ‘Gender Equality in IT and Graduate and Returners Employment.’ She is regularly listed as one of the Most Influential Woman in Tech in the UK, by Computer Weekly and has also been regularly named as one of the Most Influential Women in the North American Mid Market’ by CEO Connection.

Sheila is a keen helicopter pilot who also likes to plant trees, play golf/ski and cycle.

Nicola started her career with local government in 1998 and held several roles in South Lanarkshire Council in both frontline service delivery and in strategy/policy development.  

Nicola commenced working with COSLA, in December 2013 and covered welfare reform and devolved social security before taking on the housing and homelessness brief in autumn of 2017. Nicola has subsequently led both the Children and Young People team and Health and Social Care Team in COSLA. 

In October 2021, Nicola took on the role of Director of People Policy in COSLA and now provides day to day leadership for COSLA as a member of SMT. Nicola manages teams including Health and Social Care, Children and Young People, Strategic Migration and Digital Services. 

Karen is an ambassador for social care. Her career began as a paid carer whilst studying at university and whilst rewarding, she quickly became motivated by the pressures on the sector. A champion for person led care and support, she believes that evidence of impact is the difference it makes for people. Promoter of futures design and self-confessed data geek, she sits on the Leadership team of ImPACT working to address the evidence implementation gap and is currently working to address the social care emergency.  She has worked at various seats round the social care table, as well as for Government and as Director of the Prince of Wales Foundation. In her current role as Deputy CEO of Scottish Care, she continues to shape the future of social care with a focus on human rights, ethical commissioning, fair work, and technology. When not working, this Ayrshire lass can be found on the beach with her family. Coastguard, FRSA MIoD and wannabee salty sea dog. 

Precision Medicine Scotland is a pan-Scottish industry, academia, NHS collaboration with core funding from the Scottish Funding Council and Scottish Enterprise. It is one of eight Scottish Innovation Centres [ICs], whose remit is to connect the expertise and capabilities of Scotland’s universities and colleges with business to enhance knowledge exchange, promote innovation and address industry demand-led opportunities which are transformational for the Scottish economy.  

Marian has worked at Precision Medicine Scotland for 5 years where she has developed a strong understanding of, and passion for, precision medicine. In 2016, she gained a M.Sc. in Stratified Medicine and Pharmacological Innovation with Distinction at the University of Glasgow. Prior to that she developed her extensive business experience from various management level roles within the pharmaceutical industry where she worked for over 10 years, working mostly in the Oncology Divisions of AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly.  

Professor George Crooks is currently the Chief Executive of the Digital Health and Care Institute, Scotland’s national innovation centre for digital health and care. He leads an organisation that is tasked with delivering innovation in digital health and care that will help Scotland’s people to live longer, healthier lives, deliver sustainable health and care services for the future and create economic benefits for Scotland. DHI provides opportunities for Scotland’s public sector, academia and industry to co-design digital solutions to some of the country’s biggest health and care challenges working with patients, service users and their families. 

He was previously the Medical Director for NHS 24 and Director of the Scottish Centre for Telehealth & Telecare. George was a General Medical Practitioner for 23 years in Aberdeen latterly combining that role as Director of Primary Care for Grampian. George is on the Board of the European Connected Health Alliance and is past president of the European Health Telematics Association. He is a Board member of TEC Quality, a UK organisation leading the implementation of quality standards and practices across the assisted living sector in the UK. He is an assessor for the European Commission on programmes involving digital health and care provision and is a member of the WHO roster of experts for digital health. He has been an advisor to several European governments and organisations on digital health and care. He is an advisor to Innovate UK for its Industrial Grand Challenge programme for Health Ageing. He is also an adjunct Professor of Telehealth at the University of Southern Denmark. 

He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List 2011 for services to healthcare. 

I trained in Medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating in 1996 and spent 5 years working in hospital medicine in Glasgow.  I had the opportunity to spend a year Research Fellowship at the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Programme, University of Boston, USA studying Clinical and Pharmacoepidemiology. On return to the UK in 2002, I joined the University of Aberdeen as a Clinical Lecturer in Public Health and completed specialist training before being appointed as a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Public Health and Honorary NHS Consultant in 2007. I was awarded a personal Chair in Public Health in 2015.

I have more than 20 years of experience harnessing electronic health record data for research and population health surveillance. Working with colleagues, my research has included real world data pharmaceutical research and now focuses on understanding complexity in health and care of long term conditions, the wider determinants of health and how we use data at a ‘hyper-local’ level to support learning health systems.

I am the Director of the Aberdeen Centre for Health Data Science, a wonderful team of enthusiastic researchers,  analysts and support staff who form our multidisciplinary centre.

As a Consultant in Public Health, I was re-deployed full time to work for NHS Grampian as part of the COVID pandemic response and lead the local data response including supporting the establishment of a Scottish NHS analyst community (SCODAS) to share learning. This has placed me in the exciting position of bridging the gap between research and application, so I am continuing in this role deliberately blurring the boundaries to enable change.

Ryan Anderson is the Policy Lead for Data and Intelligence in the Digital Health and Care Division of the Scottish Government. As part of this role he is responsible for the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, as well as Part Two of the proposed National Care Service Bill. 

He has been a civil servant for seven years and joined the Scottish Government in February 2021, following a career as an intelligence analyst in the military and with HMRC.  

Dennis is the regional eHealth Programme Manager for West of Scotland (WoS), a role which he has held since 2017 and plays a pivotal part in managing a portfolio of work where a common approach and way of doing something is sought. Often this involves projects where consolidation, standardisation or data sharing across multiple stakeholder groups is required in order to support transformation of services to improve safe and effective patient care across Health Board boundaries. Prior to taking on this role Dennis worked for NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) as a Senior Project Manager where he oversaw and successfully implemented a number of high profile projects. Prior to that Dennis worked in the Private Sector for Abbey National, now Santander firstly as a Graduate Management Trainee and then as an IT Project Manager. 

Charlotte is currently Service Support Manager for Cancer Performance, starting in 2023. This role relies heavily on data quality to be able to ensure national targets can be met against a backdrop of national and local pressures. Charlotte joined the NHS GGC in 2021 as part of the NHS Scotland Management Scheme. Having previously worked in Acute Older Adult and Stroke Services, Sexual Health Services, and Specialist Children’s services she has a breadth of experience of the NHS Services and systems. She has a passion for healthcare improvement and recognises the pivotal role of data quality in delivering and identifying these improvements. 

Margaret is Head of Innovation for Care and Wellbeing.  She has over 20 years experience working with Scottish Government,  in strategic and programme delivery roles, bringing experience of significant change programmes along with  her clinical experience and  delivery roles with NHS Fife.    

Up until January 2024 Margaret led the   national cross sector TEC Programme in partnership with the NHS, Local Government, Third, Housing and Independent sector  providers aimed at supporting scale up and deployment in Scotland. This centred around the citizen and focused on improving access to services by using digital technologies and approaches to enable improved outcomes.  Margaret also championed a number of Digital Inclusion programmes and continues to lead the Digital Lifelines Scotland portfolio.  

Margaret leads the national Digital Health and Care Fest  proving a national and  international focus to developments in Scotland.  She is also involved in international projects and collaborations. 

Within DHI, Margaret’s role is to champion and lead the opportunities for digital innovation for integrated care and wellbeing bringing a spotlight to wider social care and housing opportunities.  

Margaret is a Trustee/Board member  of ENABLE Scotland and Hanover Housing Association. 

Dr Sam Patel is a consultant respiratory physician with 25 years of frontline clinical experience. He has worked in both the Scottish and English healthcare systems, undertaken research and completed his doctorate in Cardiorespiratory Physiology at Glasgow University. A decade ago, he expanded his lifelong interest in technology to the health sector and led the Scottish Government commission: ‘Closing the Loop’, aimed at improving electronic communication between Primary and Secondary care. Since then, Sam has been closely involved in the electronic management of medicines both in hospitals and in the community. To overcome his impostor syndrome, he undertook his masters in Global eHealth at Edinburgh University, graduating in 2018. He is a founding fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics and is currently a Clinical eHealth Lead at NES Digital Services. His latest project is co-leading the work to deliver paperless digital prescribing in the community.

Morag Hearty is currently National Lead for Remote Health Pathways/Connect Me within Scottish Government Digital Health & Care Directorate. 

Since qualifying as a Registered General nurse in Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Morag worked in various Primary and Secondary care posts before developing and managing several innovative joint and integrated discharge and community teams in Lanarkshire and Glasgow before leading the implementation of the Lanarkshire Technology Enabled Care service. 

The National Primary Care Digital Hypertension management pathway is a key priority and, together with other long term condition pathways, contributes to several strategic plans.    

Marc is the National Lead for the Near Me Network. Prior to his current role Marc was an Allied Health Professions Practice Education Lead and Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist in Shetland where he used Near Me clinically to provide remote services to children & families by video. As the COVID 19 pandemic took hold he supported staff and patients in their use of Near Me to enable the continuity of services to remote island communities. Marc was then part of a team who created digital resources and ran webinars to enable wider health services across Scotland to use Near Me at pace and scale.

Marc was then seconded into the Near Me Network as the National Lead to further roll out and embed Near Me within all areas of Health, Social Care and the Voluntary sector. He is currently leading on the implementation and scale up of video group consultations across Scotland using Near Me. He is also collaborating with academic institutions and NHS Education for Scotland to support the digital capabilities of both the current and future health and care workforce. Marc continues to work with partners across Scotland to provide opportunities for those who experience digital poverty to access Near Me if they choose.

Professor David J Lowe is Clinical Director Innovation University of Glasgow, Emergency Consultant at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow and Clinical Director 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. 

Jonathan is the Deputy Director for Digital Health and Care in Scottish Government, and has overall responsibility for the Digital Health and Care Data Strategy for Scotland, and is currently leading the delivery of the Digital Front Door programme. 

Prior to his current role, Jonathan held a number of IT Project Management posts in the Public and Private Sector and has a strong track record on complex IT and eHealth project and programme delivery. His career in eHealth and IT includes the delivery of the Emergency Care Summary and Key Information Summary systems which were major achievements in improving patient care across Scotland. Proud to be a CivTech Challenge Sponsor and to deliver major programmes for the NHS and wider public sector. 

Jillian Evans has worked in health organisations for most of her career in both England and Scotland.  She is currently a public health professional in NHS Grampian with advisory responsibilities in population health and planning, including providing intelligence on the current and future health needs of our communities and how the health system is able to respond.  She influences how resources are allocated for health care based on evidence and impact and is involved in assessing the quality of care within the organisation.

Jillian has played a prominent role in the prioritisation of UK wide research in health services and its delivery, and has in-country health services research experience in Nigeria and India.

For the past nine years she has been a presenter of the Health show on community radio SHMU FM, interviewing guests on particular topics and busting myths on headlines about health research.  She is currently chairperson of this third sector media organisation concerned with confidence building, skills development and employability of people in regeneration areas in Aberdeen.

A postgraduate of University College London, she was awarded Fellow of Faculty of Public Health by distinction because of her work in public health and the ability to communicate about it.

During Covid-19, Jillian has supported her team in providing data to manage health services at the height of the pandemic and more recently, generating intelligence to improve our knowledge about the spread of the virus.  She has also steered the organisation’s efforts in communication to staff and the public, with over 500 radio and TV appearances on local and national media.

Jillian is married with two daughters and lives in Catterline, an artist’s village in north east Scotland.

Dr Matthew Freer is a consultant anaesthetist in NHS Scotland and the founder/CEO of Infix Support. Having been a consultant in the NHS for over 10 years, in 2022 Dr Freer moved to work p/t at the Golden Jubilee, allowing him more time to drive the ‘once for Scotland’ implementation of infix’s flagship product infix:Schedule, which has proven gains of up to 25% in theatre efficiency.

Infix was founded in 2019 from Dr Freer’s drive to revolutionise management of patient waiting lists, improve the use of operating theatre capacity and support staff in the NHS. The use of data to drive improvements in health has always been core to Dr Freer’s belief in how to improve the productivity in healthcare. With the combination of clinical expertise, data analytics and user centred design, he believes his team have the perfect mix for the digital revolution in healthcare.

With over 30 years’ experience in IT Nadine has spent the last 10 years working with NHS and Healthcare organisations across the UK. Having previously worked in Education and Local and Central Government Nadine has a wealth of experience of working with and within the Public Sector. While working for several private global organisations, including Gartner, Nadine introduced bleeding edge technology to the market, and quickly developed a passion for bringing about change through the use of IT. Nadine is now working both regionally and nationally across Scotland and was involved in both the development of the Cancer pathway management solution and the National Treatment Centre solution which were both initially developed with NHS Highland, which has now been further developed and is being implemented at Glasgow. 

At Insource Nadine is in her element while supporting her customers to improve patient care by focusing on delivering Insource’s Healthcare Data Solutions which seamlessly bring together all forms of Healthcare Data into a unified data layer – a single source of the truth, enabling healthcare providers to make informed decisions. 

At Insource Nadine is in her element supporting healthcare providers to improve patient care through Insource’s data solutions, which seamlessly bring together data from the many disconnected operational systems and enable significant improvements to operational efficiency, performance and patient care through having the Unified Data Layer (UDL®) as a reliable single source of truth. 

JD is responsible for over 40 radiology and pathology AI projects within the iCAIRD programme, from early concept research to multi-site clinical evaluation. 

He advises Scottish Government in his role as Healthcare AI Lead and as part of Scotland’s Radiology AI Working Group, Pathology Network, Dermatology 25×25 AI Consortium, and national digital diagnostics advisory groups in England and Scotland. 

He believes that technical and clinical expertise is combining to tackle major health challenges, and that Scotland offers a rich test bed where NHS, researchers and industry can combine to deliver AI solutions that improve the quality, efficiency and sustainability of healthcare. 

Following 34 years in the National Health Service, Donna joined Insource in early April 2024. Donna has held senior leadership roles in both NHS England and NHS Scotland across the Acute Sector in both urban and rural settings. Donna has also worked corporately to develop Annual Delivery Plans, Board’s Performance Framework and the NTCH Digital Strategy and was Deputy SRO for the National Treatment Centre Programme in NHS Grampian.  She has implemented service redesign in clinical and non-clinical services improving models of care at a reduced cost; interfaced eHealth and operational maximising digital solutions, including a new Patient Management System.  

A highly skilled communicator, Donna has vast experience of engaging a wide range of stakeholders in complex business case development and improvement programmes, including clinical and non-clinical staff, Scottish Government, Primary Care, MPs, MSPs and public, voluntary and private sectors.  

Jackie Caldwell is the Strategic Lead for Scottish Medical Imaging in the  eData Research and Innovation Service in Public Health Scotland.   

Working with colleagues in the Health Informatics Centre, University of Dundee, EPCC, University of Edinburgh and NHS Scotland clinicians eDRIS can provision linkable, population based, “research-ready” real-world medical images for use in healthcare research.  The National Safe Haven offers capabilities to develop or validate AI algorithms using images and to extract information from the radiologists’ opinions of images to create new data. using Natural Language Programming.   

Challenges we are addressing include supporting innovation and working with industry whilst maintaining the trust of the public in use of their data; educating permissions bodies on AI and machine learning; creating  tools to ensure algorithms developed in the National Safe Haven do not raise privacy concerns if used elsewhere;  addressing the computing challenges of working with “big data” as we support more and more research studies; federated analysis and not least keeping abreast of the pace of developments in AI such as Large Language Models.    

Jackie originally graduated in statistics and through a variety of systems analysis and project / programme management roles in public sector, industry and NHS Scotland became passionate about delivering successful technology enabled change. Undertaking an MBA allowed her to develop a more strategic approach to the challenges she and colleagues face.  

Fiona joined the pharmaceutical sector of Johnson & Johnson in 2000 and worked across various roles, before moving to the Government Affairs function in 2007.

In 2021, Fiona moved to the J&J Enterprise Government Affairs team, which incorporates Pharmaceuticals, Medical Technologies and Early Innovation. Fiona’s remit covers the UK, focusing on the Life Science sector.

Fiona leads on data and digital policy within the J&J UK Government Affairs function and is Chair of the ABPI Scotland Data Policy group, Chair of the ABPI Scotland Life Sciences & Governments Affairs Group and Vice Chair of the Life Sciences Industry Leadership Data subgroup.

Fiona likes hill walking with her dog and spends her free time looking after too many animals!

Dr Payne is a Consultant Cardiologist who started his training in Edinburgh. Following this he travelled to London for a 5-year period of research at University College London and the Royal Brompton Hospital. He returned to Edinburgh to complete his cardiology training and took up his Consultant post in Glasgow in 2010. He now works with the NHS at the Scottish National Advanced Heart Failure Service based at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital.
Dr John Payne remains a practising cardiology consultant and patient safety champion, and joined InterSystems as Physician Executive in 2016 to help healthcare professionals across Scotland fully utilise InterSystems healthcare solutions in support of a new digital health agenda in Scotland.

Ed’s passion is improving health and social care outcomes by working with strategic leaders to harness the power of technology, artificial intelligence and whole systems thinking. He has over 20 years’ experience designing and implementing transformation and technology programmes in health, social care, and regulated industries.

His extensive experience in the design and delivery of major programmes of health and social care re-configuration (inc ICS) across UK and Ireland is complimented by a strong track record in implementing innovative technology solutions in both public and private sector.

Ed has implemented operating models to enable new approaches to health and social care commissioning and is a Certified Information Systems Auditor who has advised public sector and pharmaceutical companies on information sharing and security.

An experienced facilitator and public speaker he hosted the launch of the Midlands Engine, introducing keynote speakers including Rt Hon Sajid Javid.

Daniel has assumed a range of leadership roles in emergency care provision in both clinical and R&D positions in the NHS, Harvard University Hospitals and the Health IT industry. 

Daniel has occupied management and operational roles directing frontline services to meet the contemporary challenges in healthcare provisions. He is also a recipient of a NIHR Clinical Research Fellowship award at Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery and is Imprivata’s Clinical Safety Officer. Daniel continues to be active within the nursing community, championing the development of Nursing Chief Information Officer role at a national and European level, with involvement in GDE Nursing & Midwifery Learning and HIMSS Europe Nursing Informatics Communities. 

Dr. Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer, is a prominent healthcare industry spokesperson discussing how the NHS in the UK and healthcare organisations in Europe and Australia can deliver on the promise of digital healthcare services. Simon has worked as a GP, hospital and public health doctor as well as working for a range of organisations including Bupa, Dr Foster and Cerner Corporation. 

Dr James Graveston is a Business Consultant at Zühlke, a digital innovation and engineering consultancy. With a unique background as a dual-qualified doctor and engineer, he is driven by a passion for improving healthcare outcomes through the development of real-world digital innovations. James has gained valuable experience working as an ENT surgeon in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and has dedicated his career to healthcare delivery, particularly in the areas of medtech and SaMD (software as a medical device). He has also worked as a consultant for top-tier firms such as Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte UK before joining Zühlke in April 2022.  

Mark Mulholland joined Orion Health in July 2023, following 14 years at EMIS Health working across Primary, Community and Acute markets in various sales management and strategic account roles across the UK. He has 15 years of experience in healthcare software, customer-led product design, contract delivery and partnerships, and he is passionate about matching healthcare problems to technological solutions. At Orion Health, Mark is responsible for our NHS Scotland customers.

Tristan Verrier is a French third year Ethical Hacking student at Abertay University and Ethical Hacker at the Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland. His role consists of organising cybersecurity training events and conducting vulnerability assessments to improve organisations cybersecurity. Outwith this role, Tristan is the Vice-President of the Ethical Hacking Society of Abertay University and assists in the organisation of Securi-Tay, an annual information security conference.