AI in the NHS: Shaping the future of health care

Hatim is the Chief Executive Officer for Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, which is part of the NHS Health Innovation Network. Alongside this role, he continues to practice as a General Practitioner. 

In 2018, Hatim was appointed National Medical Directors Clinical Fellow to Professor Wendy Reid by the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management. His key achievements were co-author and member of the Sir Keith Pearson Commission into NHS Staff and Learner Mental Health and co-founding the ‘Topol Programme for Digital Health Fellowships’ launched by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in 2019. He later became the National Clinical Lead for AI and Digital Workforce at NHS England providing clinical leadership to the NHS Digital Academy and leading on AI in the NHS’s historic Long Term Workforce Plan. 

Having studied Medicine at the prestigious Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, he later completed a Masters in Sports and Exercise from the University of South Wales, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Health Leadership from Imperial College London. He is a  Fellow of the British Computer Society and, Advance Higher Education and Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

As a former Senior Lecturer at Brunel University London, Hatim supported the Physician Associate MSc and development of Brunel Medical School. He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Keele University, working with European partners to develop a Masters in Explainable AI in healthcare management. He is also a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Technology Appraisals Committee, the Responsible AI UK Health and Care Group and the Responsible AI Institute Sustainable AI Consortium.

Erika is a consultant radiologist and was Medical Director in Norwich from 2018 to 2023. She was appointed to join the team of National Medical Directors in September 2023 with an extensive portfolio in the Transformation Directorate including clinical leadership of digital programmes, artificial intelligence, research and pathway transformation.

Erika’s appointment to the role of Medical Director in 2018 followed 2 years as Associate Medical Director.

As National Advisor on Imaging to NHS Improvement & NHS England Erika provided advice from 2016 – 2020. She convened and chaired the National Imaging Optimisation and Productivity Delivery Board. She lead work to improve imaging services across England and continues to work with NHS Digital on implementation of artificial intelligence in imaging.

Erika was the National Clinical Director for Diagnostics at NHS England with responsibility for clinical leadership, advice and guidance across the NHS and covering all diagnostic services from 2013-2016. From 2005-2013 Erika was National Clinical Lead, and subsequently National Clinical Director, for Imaging at DH leading a complex programme of work across all aspects of imaging including leading the national PACS Programme.

Erika was previously Divisional Clinical Director for support services, Director of Breast Screening and Head of Radiology Training in Norwich.

Erika did her medical training at St Thomas’ Hospital, London and then spent 4 years in general medical training before radiology training in London. She was a consultant radiologist at Kings College Hospital in London before she moved to Norfolk in 1999.

Dr Jennifer Dixon joined the Health Foundation as Chief Executive in October 2013.

Jennifer was Chief Executive of the Nuffield Trust from 2008 to 2013. Prior to this, she was Director of Policy at The King’s Fund and was the policy advisor to the Chief Executive of the National Health Service between 1998 and 2000. Jennifer has undertaken research and published widely on health care reform both in the UK and internationally.

Originally trained in medicine, Jennifer practised mainly paediatric medicine, prior to a career in policy analysis. She has a Master’s in public health and a PhD in health services research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1990–91, Jennifer was a Harkness Fellow in New York.

Jennifer has served as a Board member of the Health Care Commission 2004–2009; the Audit Commission 2003–2012; the Care Quality Commission 2013–2016 and the UK Health Security Agency 2022–2024. She has led two national inquiries for government: on the setting up of published ratings of quality of NHS and social care providers in England (2013); and on the setting up of ratings for general practices (2015). She was also a member of the Parliamentary Review Panel for the Welsh Assembly Government advising on the future strategy for the NHS and social care in Wales (2017–2018).

Jennifer was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2009 and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2019, and she was awarded a doctorate of science from Bristol University in 2016. She is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, and has held similar positions at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Imperial College Business School. In January 2024 Jennifer was awarded a damehood in the New Years Honours.

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 Foundation's strategic partnerships in this space, including the Q Community, THIS Institute and IMPACT Centre, and our first spin-out THISLabs.

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.  

Malte is also a trustee of the Alzheimer’s Society, 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.

Felix is Director of Digital, Data & Innovation Strategy & Head of the joint Department of Health and Social Care/NHS England Digital Policy Unit – driving forward digital and data transformation of health and social care for patients, staff and clinicians in the NHS.  

He was previously director for science, evidence and analytics at NICE, deputy director for science and strategic information at Public Health England, clinical adviser to the Chief Medical Officer – England, and a medical officer at the World Health Organization. He is also a consultant in public health medicine and a clinical reader at Imperial College London with an academic interest in evaluating public health and digital interventions.  

Felix trained at Oxford University (BA, BM BCh), Harvard University (MPH) and Imperial College (MBA, PhD). He was awarded a Knox Fellowship by Harvard University, the Sir John Brotherston Prize by the Faculty of Public Health in the UK, an Academic Clinical Fellowship by the UK National Institute for Health Research, and a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice by the Commonwealth Fund.  

Tim Horton joined the Health Foundation in December 2015 as an Associate Director. His role is focussed on identifying and communicating the insights and learning from the Health Foundation’s programmes, as well as supporting the spread of health care innovation and improvement.

From 2011 to 2015, Tim was health policy adviser to the Leader of the Opposition, the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, and Head of Public Services at the Labour Party. He also convened the independent Taskforce on Mental Health in Society, whose report The Mentally Healthy Society was published in January 2015. Prior to this, Tim was Research Director at the Fabian Society, where he published research in several areas of social and economic policy. In 2005 he was a special adviser at the Department of Trade & Industry and prior to that a policy adviser on science and innovation policy at HM Treasury.

Isaac “Zak” Kohane, MD, PhD, is the inaugural chair of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, whose mission is to develop the methods, tools, and infrastructure required for a new generation of scientists and care providers to move biomedicine rapidly forward by taking advantage of the insight and precision offered by big data. Kohane develops and applies computational techniques to address disease at multiple scales, from whole health care systems to the functional genomics of neurodevelopment. He also has worked on AI applications in medicine since the 1990’s, including automated ventilator control, pediatric growth monitoring, detection of domestic abuse, diagnosing autism from multimodal data and most recently assisting clinicians using whole genome sequence and clinical histories to diagnose rare or unknown disease patients. He is the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of NEJM AI and co-author of a recent book “The AI Revolution in Medicine." He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American College of Medical Informatics.  

A medical doctor turned digital health leader, Avi serves as an Associate Partner and Clinical Safety Officer for Healthcare and Life Sciences at IBM. He is also the Co-Founder of Doctorpreneurs, a pioneering global community for medical innovators and entrepreneurs.  

With extensive experience in healthcare technology, Avi has supported clients and projects across 22 countries, and specialises in the responsible application of Artificial Intelligence (including Generative AI) and emerging technologies across health and care. His past roles include Global Clinical Adoption Leader at IBM Watson Health and Digital Health Clinical Lead at Bupa.

Avi is a Fellow at the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance and British Computer Society, Digital Health Advisor and Guest Lecturer at leading Universities in the UK and internationally. His contributions to healthtech earned him the UK Asian Tech Pioneer Award in 2022 by Diversity UK. 

Rachel joined the Patients Association as Chief Executive in 2017 and has led changes in the charity, resulting in a more engaged membership and an increase in profile for the Patients Association and its goal of embedding patient partnership in the design and delivery of health and care services.  

Described by The Times as, “the UK’s foremost patient campaigner”, Rachel is a passionate advocate for patient-centred care. Rachel’s focus is on empowering patients through the provision of information that enables them to be active partners in their care. This is reflected in the Patients Association general election manifesto that provides the next Government with a roadmap of how to ensure access to high quality care and embed patient partnership across health and care services. 

Professor Susan Shelmerdine is an associate professor at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health and Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) Roentgen Professor (2025). She is also a consultant paediatric radiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Her research work focusses on the use of artificial intelligence in children’s imaging. She holds many international and national society roles including chair of the AI taskforce of the European Society of Paediatric Radiology, member of the European Society of Radiology eHealth and Informatics, RCR Artificial Intelligence committees, NIHR Imaging Working Group member and research lead for the South West London AI Working Group. 

Haris Shuaib is Consultant Clinical Scientist and Head of the Clinical Scientific Computing at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, the NHS’s first dedicated medical AI team. He is also director of the NHS Fellowships in Clinical AI.

Additionally, Haris is founder and CEO of Newton’s Tree, a British healthtech startup that delivers an AI deployment platform to help hospitals safely and efficiently adopt AI technology. 

Eric is a Senior Health Economist leading the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) work in Digital Health, bringing together policy guidance for digital tools, integrated data, and responsible analytics including artificial intelligence. In that role, he is accountable for measuring and evolving the OECD’s Recommendation on Health Data Governance (2016) and supporting digital health policy that provides data protection (eg security and privacy) and timely access to quality data to optimize the use of data for information, insights, and impact among individuals, health workers, policy makers, researchers, and innovators.

Nell leads major research projects on the use of new technologies and data analytics to improve healthcare, including in the fields of automation, artificial intelligence and learning health systems.

Nell was previously the Senior Delivery and Business Manager for the Leeds Academic Health Partnership. She managed programmes across tech innovation, health data, workforce development and personalisation in collaboration with NHS providers and commissioners, universities, the local authority, and academic health science network.

Nell has a BA (Hons) in History & Philosophy of Science and Politics, and a distinction in her MA Social Research from the University of Leeds where she focussed on the construction of policy narratives regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the health service.