Frances Aviss
Head of Engagement - NHS Dorset
Frances Aviss
Head of Engagement – NHS Dorset
Frances is Head of Engagement for NHS Dorset and Chairs the Integrated Care System’s Engagement Leads Network which helps the NHS, local councils and the community and voluntary sector to have a joined-up approach to working in partnership with people and communities. Frances also represents Dorset on both regional and national engagement networks, sharing good practice and learning from others.
Frances has worked in the NHS for over 30 years’ and has extensive experience of patient, carer and public engagement. She believes passionately in the importance of listening to people and communities to understand their beliefs, experiences, culture and aspirations, being led by them to explore innovative ways to improve health and wellbeing.
Frances’s passion for people started when she volunteered at a Health and Welfare Centre in Pune, India, where she was introduced to the power of community involvement. It was through spending time understanding the views and needs of local people that the centre was able to successfully deliver community led programmes to provide ante natal support, pre-school education and many sustainable community development programmes including bee keeping and fresh-water projects.
Frances holds a research based Master’s degree in population studies and a further post-graduate qualification in healthcare engagement and communications.
Frances was awarded a national Health Service Journal Award for her work to encourage and support a “Stronger Voices” programme and has
worked closely with The Point of Care Foundation to develop local training that helps support how we ensure our engagement starts with people.
Neil Bacon
Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer - NHS Dorset
Neil Bacon
Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer – NHS Dorset
Neil is a professor and leader who has founded businesses, building and inspiring teams of all sizes from start-ups to a global healthcare charity; growing organisations that make a difference. He is an entrepreneur and CEO with experience across multiple sectors: having worked as a nephrologist in Harvard and Oxford, he then turned to business, founding two innovative technology/data healthcare businesses, before transforming a global not-for-profit for the digital age and now an honorary professor at University of Exeter. His focus is on innovations that improve people’s lives: human-centred innovation.
Neil has a passion in taking brilliant digital ideas and technologies from different sectors and applying them to meet large-scale human needs and social challenges in a way that creates lasting change. His energy is in leading, enabling and teaching others to do the same.’
Cecilia Bufton
Chair of the Dorset Integrated Care Partnership (ICP)
Cecilia Bufton
Chair of the Dorset Integrated Care Partnership (ICP)
Cecilia has enjoyed a successful business career over 30 years, working in a range of companies from SMEs to multinational businesses and a Trade Association. She has held senior level roles in strategic marketing, sales and business development and brings to the Board her experiences of working in medical, pharmaceutical, digital health and wellbeing companies. Her career has involved the development and delivery of products and services that help change the way healthcare is delivered.
As a non-executive director, business adviser and charity chair, Cecilia enjoys working with organisations, helping to create a compelling vision for their future and working with them to achieve their goals.
Cecilia is a science graduate with an MBA focused on international, strategic marketing and a certificate in Global Leadership from the University of Oxford. With her expertise, Cecilia is well placed to drive forward Dorset LEP’s ambition to secure investment from the government and the private sector and really put Dorset on the map.
Cecilia is also Chair of the Dorset LEP Board, joining Dorset LEP on 1 December 2020.
Cecilia is also a member of the Nominations and Remuneration Committee and the Finance, Audit and Corporate Risk Committee.
Heather Case
Deputy Director of Data and Analytics - NHS Dorset
Heather Case
Deputy Director of Data and Analytics – NHS Dorset
Having moved to London from Dorset for university, Heather moved back almost nine years ago and into the NHS for the first time.
Heather has worked in a number of change and delivery roles prior to joining the NHS in the prison service, national policing and law enforcement agencies and other government departments, as both crown servant and independent consultant. Heather has delivered technical and business change projects and programmes across all these sectors enabling the sharing of data and analytical intelligence to effect long lasting change to ways of working and operational outcomes.
The focus of the last six years has been the development of a data and analytics platform to support Dorset’s transition into an ICS. In her previous role as Head of DiiS, the Dorset Intelligence & Insight Service, the DiiS became and remains as one of the best capabilities we have across Dorset to support the ICS to truly develop integrated health and care and use the power of data to better understand our population and communities and plan services more fit for purpose to keep people well for longer – or population health management in other words.
Sarah Chessell
Lead Dorset Innovation Hub - NHS Dorset
Sarah Chessell
Lead Dorset Innovation Hub / Head of Innovation – Working on behalf of the Integrated Care System (NHS Dorset)
Sarah has over thirty years’ experience working in local and national quality and service improvement roles within the NHS including research, innovation, NICE and clinical audit. In 2021, Sarah widened her portfolio becoming Lead for the Dorset Innovation Hub.
Sarah is Lead for the Dorset Innovation Hub and Head of Innovation working on behalf of the Integrated Care System (NHS Dorset). Sarah is responsible for the strategic oversight, partnership working and delivery of the Dorset Innovation Hub. The Dorset Innovation Hub is a place-based partnership that draws together partner organisations to provide expertise to spread and adopt prioritised innovation across Dorset. To find out more about our work go to: Innovation – Our Dorset ICS Innovation
Sarah has a proactive, pragmatic, reflective and collaborative style. Her expertise and experience lie in project management with key focus on consideration of ‘pull in the system’, sustainable implementation, capacity and capability and supporting and enabling staff to undertake priority projects using the ‘right approach, involving the right people, right tool and at the right time’. Sarah’s key focus is on ensuring service users and key stakeholders are at the heart of the delivery of quality of care. Sarah uses a system wide thinking approach through the golden thread of quality including: research, innovation, improvement, clinical audit, quality improvement and National Institute of Clinical Excellence programmes.
Through facilitation Sarah and her team encourage the review and use of the ‘right approach, involving the right people, right tool and at the right time’ to enable staff to undertake a benefits realisation review of the quality of care provided and ensure that actions are undertaken to improve service user care where necessary. Sarah considers that improvement is integral to all health and care staffs’ roles and this is central to strengthening the culture of improvement and to improving service users experience and outcomes.
Sarah has a BA in Post Compulsory Education (Southampton University (2006)), completed the Ashridge NIHR Leadership Programme (2017), and until recently held a Teaching Faculty Associate for the NHS England Quality, Service Improvement and Redesign (QSIR) programme. Sarah is undertaking her doctoral research with Bournemouth University entitled – Critical Realist study exploring the sustainability of patient experience focused quality initiatives in healthcare settings.
Sarah has previously been the principal Investigator for the research study “An evaluation of a real-time survey for improving patients’ experiences of the relational aspects of care (After Francis)” and was coordinator at Poole for the research study “Preventable Incidents, Survival and Mortality Study 2 (PRISM2)”.
Sarah is a visiting fellow with the Centre for Workforce Systems and Innovation (CWSI), AECC University College and a visiting associate with the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Bournemouth University.
Debbie Clifton
Dorset Innovation Hub PPI Representative
Debbie Clifton
Dorset Innovation Hub Patient & Public Involvement (PPI) Representative
Debbie worked for Bournemouth Council for 28 years in management roles with an excellent record of managing partnerships, projects, conferences and engagement events with the public, private and voluntary sector. She worked on projects to improve the quality of life of local people which included health projects. This gave Debbie an insight into the health inequalities locally and worked with a wide range of partners to tackle them. She organised a Health & Wellbeing Strategy Board and a Health & Wellbeing Forum.
She successfully established and managed Bournemouth’s first Community Land Trust and oversaw the build and sale of 13 shared ownership eco homes in Boscombe.
Debbie had to take early retirement due to ill health and is now disabled with a range of conditions including a rare life-threatening condition called Addisons Disease.
She joined Bournemouth University’s PIER group (Public Involvement In Education and Research) in 2018 where she uses her experiences and perspective of health care to benefit students and research. Debbie also carry’s out a similar education role with Bournemouth & Poole Collage Nursing Associate students.
She is also a trustee for the Community Action Network which operates across Dorset.
In addition, she is the treasurer of East Dorset Centre of the Caravan and Motorhome Club.
Christina Cornwell
Senior Associate - Innovation Unit
Christina Cornwell
Senior Associate – Innovation Unit
Christina joined the Innovation Unit as a Senior Associate in January 2021 after more than 20 years working in policy, strategy, innovation and evaluation in health and social care.
Her work at Innovation Unit spans our health and care inequalities and mental health portfolios, leading and supporting several projects and helping to shape future opportunities. Currently, she is helping four health and care systems establish Innovation Hubs to get better at adopting innovations that improve care and address inequalities. She is also supporting Greater Manchester to transform its community mental health system, including by adapting and adopting the principles of Living Well UK. She is sponsoring work to redesign the NHS Volunteer Responders Programme and is working with UCLPartners to explore opportunities for more equitable diagnostic service provision in North Central London.
Other projects have included: supporting Suffolk and North East Essex ICS shape their innovation strategy and helping 10 sites collaborating as part of the Clinical Entrepreneurship Innovation Sites programme to assess their innovation cultures and capabilities and identify opportunities for improvement.
Prior to Innovation Unit, Christina’s work in health and care spanned multiple contexts, from working in frontline services in the UK and in Australia, to supporting the development of social movements and community organisations, to developing strategy and policy in central government and regulation. Most recently, Christina was the Executive Director with responsibility for Nesta’s portfolio of social, digital and place-based innovation programmes in health.
Christina is passionate about improving health and reducing inequalities through the power of co-production with communities, staff, local and national policy makers, academics and other statutory and voluntary sector partners.
Deborah Curtis
Dorset Innovation Hub PPI Representative
Deborah Curtis
Dorset Innovation Hub Patient & Public Involvement (PPI) Representative
I have been a patient expert for a number of years now due to a change in my health around 12 years ago.
I previously worked for the NHS and in community mental health for 25 years. I enjoy turning a negative into a positive and can offer a well-rounded PPI perspective.
Andy Dean
Deputy Chief Medical Officer - Dorset HealthCare
Andy Dean
Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Community Services & Physical Health – Dorset HealthCare
Andy has worked in healthcare since 1991, initially as a GP and then in the Community Hospital sector. In the last 10 years he has worked within the older adult sector, particularly with those who are experiencing changes in their mobility and memory. He currently works for Dorset Healthcare in Weymouth and Portland at Westhaven Community Hospital including the virtual care Ward . He is also the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Dorset Healthcare Integrated Community Services.
Crystal Dennis
Interim Deputy Director of Digital & Technology - NHS Dorset
Crystal Dennis
Interim Deputy Director of Digital & Technology and Health of Digital Access to Services @Home – NHS Dorset
Crystal’s background of working in health services spans over 20 years starting her career as a dental nurse progressing in Practice Management, project or programme roles within Dentistry, mental health and ambulance services. Six years ago, her experience of increasing pressures and demand has led her to her existing role running a centrally coordinated function on behalf of the integrated care system designing hybrid models of care with industry and citizens. Crystal’s team and their work spans not just the redesign of integrated models of care, which considering digital risk management so that the use of digital tools does not cause harm to patients all the way through to data driven evaluation and impact reviews alongside patient stories. It also spans the technical aspects working with enterprise and solution architect for integration, UX leads, research and modelling.
Crystal and her team are driven and determined that citizens / patients are empowered through a well-coordinated suite of integrated tools to manage one’s own health and care without hospital walls.
Savannah Fishel
Innovation Consultant - Innovation Unit
Savannah Fishel
Innovation Consultant – Innovation Unit
Savannah is an experienced Innovation Consultant and Service Designer. She uses cross-sector collaboration, social innovation, and service design approaches to support clients in tackling systemic inequalities.
Savannah works across the Innovation Unit portfolio with specific expertise in the social determinants of health. She has been involved over the last three years in the Adopting Innovation programme, supporting the establishment of Dorset Innovation Hub. Recently Savannah has led projects which have involved: leading work with Sport England to grow and embed their innovative culture and youth voice offer; supporting anchor institutions to use their resource and influence to benefit local communities through leading the Health Anchors Learning Network; up-skilling Local Authority staff on ethnography and prototyping to mitigate the impact of rising Cost of Living; co-designing improved support for frequent attendees of A&E in Dorset; and running a learning programme for charities who are developing sustainable equity-focused partnerships with statutory organisations.
Prior to Innovation Unit Savannah has held positions in politics, both within parliament and for an external campaigns group, and influenced NHS and DHSC policy when working for a national coalition of health and social care charities.
Ian Gall
Chair - Our Dorset ICS Public Engagement Group
Ian Gall
Chair, Our Dorset ICS Public Engagement Group (PEG)
Ian started his career with the BBC, becoming a producer, director and presenter in both national and local radio and television. He then worked in corporate television and communications with large and small companies, using employee and corporate communications to explain new ways of working and change.
He’s involved with his GP practice’s patient participation group (PPG) and has a number of other roles in Dorset, including Chair of the Our Dorset Integrated Care System Public Engagement Group (PEG) and Patient & Public Lead for the Dorset General Practice Alliance. With NHS England he’s a National Public Advisor and has roles with Specialised Commissioning. Ian lives with his wife in North Dorset and is passionate about the person being at the heart of everything the NHS does.
Christos Gatzidis
Head of Dept. Creative Technology - Bournemouth Uni
Christos Gatzidis
Head of Department for Creative Technology – Bournemouth University
Christos is the Head of Department for Creative Technology, within the Faculty of Science and Technology at Bournemouth University. Previously he has been a Principal Academic and also served as the Programme Leader for the Games Technology and Games Programming undergraduate degrees.
Christos has contributed to several refereed conference, book and journal publications and has served as a member on a number of international program committees for various conferences plus reviewed for a number of journals. He has also chaired the VS Games 2013 conference as well as guest edited special issues at journals such as Elsevier’s Entertainment Computing and IGI’s International Journal of Game Based Learning.
Recently awarded research grants include the EU-funded Leonardo Transfer of Innovation GameiT project, the Leonardo Transfer of Innovation GameWise project and the Erasmus+ GameBiz project. Christos has also co-authored a textbook focusing on the use of the Unreal game engine for mobile (iOS) game development which was published in 2012, titled “UDK iOS Game Development Beginners Guide”.
Christos is also a member of the following association bodies; IEEE, ACM, IET, Eurographics and SIGGRAPH.
Malte Gerhold
Director of Innovation & Improvement - Health Foundation
Malte Gerhold
Director of Innovation & Improvement – Health Foundation
Malte Gerhold joined the Health Foundation in May 2022 as Director of Innovation and Improvement.
Malte leads the Foundation’s work to support radical innovation and improvement in health and care services, providing insights, practical resources and funding to enable change, including through new technologies and data. He also oversees the Foundations strategic partnerships in this space, including the Q Community, THIS Institute, and IMPACT Centre.
He was previously Chief Integrated Care Officer at Birdie, a digital startup helping to reinvent the way we age, where he led its collaboration across social care and the NHS. Before that he was Executive Director of Strategy and Intelligence at the Care Quality Commission, leading on its methodology, analytics and communications, including its regulatory approach to new innovations and improvement. He has also lived and worked in Sierra Leone, and in the UK he worked at the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, the Department of Health, and Accenture.
He is a member of the Sciana Health Leaders Network, and a Fellow of the RSA. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the London School of Economics and a Masters and PhD from the University of Oxford.
Richard Harding
Business Development Manager - The Hartree Centre
Richard Harding
Business Development Manager – Hartree Centre
Business brain for social gain. I am a digital enabler, and experienced Programme Manager and Business Development Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the health care industry. Leveraging capability of the Hartree Centre’s AI, Quantum and HPC for the public sector and industry. Skilled in Business Planning, Coaching, Management, Healthcare, and Digital Innovation. Strong strategic innovation professional with a Master of Science (MSc) focused in Assistive Technology from Coventry University and an expert in Models of Technology Adoption and scale-up.
Anne
Dorset Innovation Hub PPI Representative
Anne
Dorset Innovation Hub Patient & Public Involvement (PPI) Representative
I am a retired company director with 25 years of involvement with the NHS and community in a voluntary capacity. I served on several committees in Poole Hospital before the merger and continue to be a patient representative on a committee in UHD. In the community I ran a health information service within a GP’s practice for 20 years and have also been involved in the production and editing of information for patients on many different subjects.
Gina MacDonald Main
HeartFlow: Vice President Government Affairs & Sales
Gina MacDonald Main
HeartFlow: Vice President Government Affairs & Sales
As an experienced International Sales, Marketing and Business Development professional with more than 30 years’ experience in the healthcare industry, Gina is the Vice President Government Affairs & Sales for HeartFlow within the UK, Ireland and Benelux region. Gina is dedicated to working with physicians, trusts and commissioners to bring innovative technologies into hospitals to improve patient care and reduce costs to the NHS. With a background in nursing, market access, building and leading high-performance teams, Gina develops and leads country specific marketing and business plans, including global product launch strategies.
Patricia Miller
Chief Executive Officer - NHS Dorset
Patricia Miller
Chief Executive Officer – NHS Dorset
Patricia is the Chief Executive Officer for Dorset’s Integrated Care Board. Responsible for overseeing complex health services and health improvement programmes for local communities.
Patricia has over 30 years’ experience of working in the NHS and holds a Masters degree in Health Care Management. She is a graduate of the East of England Aspiring Directors Programme, the ‘Breaking Through’ Leadership Programme, the Athena Leadership Programme for Executive Women, and the Collaborative Leadership Programme at the Kings Fund.
Whilst working in the NHS Patricia has remained passionate about improving the lives of patients and staff in ways that matter to them. Patricia has a strong focus on equality, diversity, inclusion, and health inequalities. She is currently co-chair of the provider Chairs and CEOs network, and member of the NHS England’s Health Inequalities Oversight Group. Patricia is a member by distinction of the Faculty of Public Health.
Patricia was named as one of 25 Rising Stars of the NHS in 2013, one of the top 50 CEOs in 2019, was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to the NHS and was named amongst the top 50 BAME figures who will exercise the most power and/or influence in the NHS and health policy in 2020.
Sarah Parsons
Ageing Well Lead - Dorset Council
Sarah Parsons
Ageing Well Lead, Adult Social Care – Dorset Council
Sarah is a dedicated Ageing Well Lead at Dorset Council. She has been qualified as an Occupational Therapist since 1997. Her career, deeply rooted in Adult Social Care, has seen her become the first consultant Occupational Therapist in Somerset and advance through various management roles across Somerset and Dorset. Sarah is Passionate about empowering individuals to thrive in their own spaces. Her focus has always been on a proactive approach to developing supportive networks and using technology-enabled care to enhance the quality of life for all.
Stephen Slough
Chief Information Officer - NHS Dorset
Stephen Slough
Chief Information Officer – NHS Dorset
Prior to joining the NHS in 2016 Stephen spent over 22 years working for Siemens, starting as an apprentice and working his way through a variety of roles ranging from programming and application configuration to corporate strategy and governance, account management and service design/provision.
In the NHS he has held CIO roles for a variety of organisations in the Dorset ICS including Dorset CCG, Dorset Healthcare and Dorset County Hospital. This has given him the opportunity to understand the differences and similarities in delivering services to staff and patients across Primary Care, Community and Mental Health services into the Acute Care setting. He is now the Chief Digital Information Officer for the Dorset Integrated Care Board with accountability for digital, data and technology across the NHS in Dorset.
He is a strong advocate for the British Computer Society having been a member for a number of years personally and now organisationally as he aims to improve the visibility of the digital profession in the NHS, help develop career pathways and opportunities for personal development for his teams. He has been the CIO representative on the national BCS Health and Care Executive.
Living with his family just outside of Dorchester in Dorset he is also a volunteer with Dorset Search and Rescue, currently holding the post of Unit Leader.
He is a Chartered Fellow of the BCS, a Leading Practitioner of FEDIP, a Certified Healthcare CIO and a Certified Digital Health Executive with CHIME.
