Policy Keynote Speakers
Mark Chapman, Interim Director of Medical Technology NICE
Mark joined us in 2022 as interim director for medical technology and digital evaluation. This includes diagnostics, digital and medtech that can be implantable or assistive. Mark has 30 years of experience in the medtech arena. He initially trained as a Clinical Physiologist, and worked for 10 years within the UK NHS, Tertiary Cardiac Care, with a specialist interest in complex cardiac devices. Moving into Industry in 2001, holding various clinical and commercial roles. In parallel, he has held roles, including committee member on our technology appraisal programme. Is a past member of the External Advisory Board, University of Leeds EPSRC Centre for innovative Manufacturing of Medical Devices. Mark has also undertaken secondment within the UK Government, Office for Life science, Department of Business, as MedTech Policy Advisor. Since 2014 Mark was the Director of Health Economics and Commissioning for UK & Ireland at Medtronic.
Matt Chapman, KTN Innovate UK
Matt leads on Medical Technology within the Health team at Innovate UK KTN, working closely with colleagues in the adjacent and increasingly converging fields of digital health and medicines, as well as with colleagues from other KTN teams (particularly manufacturing, materials and investment). He also leads KTN’s place-based activity in the North West of England, convening colleagues from across the Innovate UK family of organisations to work together more effectively and to share best practice
Pete Waddington, NetZERO Lead, AHSN Network
Pete Waddingham is the National Net Zero Lead for the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN) Network – an organisation that supports the 15 AHSNs across England in order to spread innovation at pace and scale within the NHS – improving health and generating economic growth. Pete has spent the last 4 years working on a range of innovation including projects that help improve efficiency and quality of care. Prior to this Pete worked as an Operation Manager within the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and also 10 years within the NHS as a Commissioning Manager. He also has 10 years’ experience of working within Local Government and during his career has always tried to blend innovation, creative thinking with an understanding of the need to tackle climate change.
Technology Keynote Speakers
Dr Owen Johnson, Assistant Professor in Digital Health, University of Leeds
Owen Johnson is a Senior Fellow working in Digital Health in the School of Computing at the University of Leeds. He is one of the Co-Directors of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence for Medical Diagnosis and Care and is the Programme Leader for the MRes in Data Science and Analytics for Health. He has a commercial background in software development and IT leadership and has taught software engineering to computer scientists for more than 20 years. He won the 2014 InnovateUK prize for his work developing ResearchOne, a data service providing an access route to 30 million primary care records. He helped to develop the PPM+ electronic healthcare record system used by Leeds hospitals and the national pathology system used across the UK. His research interests are in the application of process mining to care pathways and he helps lead PODS4H, the international community for Process Oriented Data Science for Healthcare.
Prof Philip Breedon, Professor of Smart Technologies at Nottingham Trent University
Philip Breedon is a Professor of Smart Technologies and leads the Medical Engineering Design Research group at NTU. He gained his PhD in robotics and AI and is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered IT professional. He is a member of the UK’s Department of Health National Institute for Health Research invention for innovation funding panel (NIHR i4i) and the Royal College of Surgeons MSK Robotic and Digital Surgery Subgroup. His research interests focus on wearable technologies, 3D/4D printing for medical applications, rehabilitation technology, surgical robotics, cardiovascular devices, extended reality technologies and environments, the surgical pathway and investigative research related to the utilisation of ‘smart materials’ for medical applications. Through promoting his work and research activities he now works with a number of surgeons and clinicians across Europe and has given keynote lectures at the NSpine International conference on both surgical robotics and additive manufacturing. He was invited, and consequently visited six NASA centres across the USA to discuss potential collaborative research opportunities and to examine the latest materials and technology research and its applications; more recently this included the NASA Glenn Research Center.
Prof Shahin Rahimifard, Professor of Sustainable Engineering at Loughborough University
Shahin Rahimifard is a Professor of Sustainable Engineering at Loughborough University and the Founder and Director of the Centre for “Sustainable Manufacturing And Recycling Technologies (SMART)” [www.centreforsmart.co.uk]. His research work is focused on sustainability issues throughout a ‘Product Lifecycle’, including projects on sustainable product design, resource efficient manufacturing, sustainable business models, and reuse and recycling technologies. These projects have benefited from involvement of several high-profile global manufacturers and retailers, which include Rolls-Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, GM, NB, Nike, Clarks, Next, Unilever, PepsiCo, Marks and Spencer, and Tesco.
Professor Rahimifard is the Principal Investigator of a recently funded project (2022-2025) by the Physical Science and Engineering Research Council (EPSRC) focused on establishing a circular economy for small medical devices. This is a collaborative project between Loughborough University and University of Leeds, as well as 7 industrial partners and NHS trusts. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the ‘International Journal of Sustainable Engineering’ [https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tsue20/current/] and has over 200 refereed publications associated with his work.