Professor Amar Rangan
Amar Rangan is Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, holding the Mary Kinross Trust & Royal College of Surgeons Chair at Department of Health Sciences and Hull York Medical School, University of York. He also holds a full Professorship with the Faculty of Medical Sciences & NDORMS, University of Oxford. He is a Shoulder & Elbow Surgeon at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust in Middlesbrough and is current President of the British Elbow and Shoulder Society.
Amar leads a programme of clinical and translational research, including NIHR funded multi-centre clinical trials. He has published widely in Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgery, particularly in the field of Shoulder & Elbow surgery, where his work has influenced clinical practice, national guidelines and policy. He is a member of the NIHR i4i Challenge Awards Committee and is a surgeon member of the Steering Committee of the National Joint Registry. Amar is also the MedConnect North Group Lead.
James Carroll
James Carroll is the founder and CEO of THOR Photomedicine. He has co-authored 24 academic Photobiomodulation (PBM) papers and contributed chapters to five PBM books.
James is a recognised authority on PBM dose, dose-rate effects, and the measurement and reporting of parameters. He is also the co-chair of the Biomedical Optics Society conference on Photobiomodulation mechanisms, fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a World Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy committee member.
He has spoken at many notable events, including the US Congressional briefing on PBM as a solution for the opioid crisis, the White House briefing on PBM as a solution for the opioid crisis, and the United Nations Global Health Impact Forum on Photobiomodulation for Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration. He has received a 2020 award from the World Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy, a presidential commendation for service and leadership in the field of Photobiomodulation 2021, and the T.H. Maiman Award for Excellence in Dental Laser Research.
Dr Tom Harvey
Dr Tom Harvey is currently a Chief Technologist at CPI. His job is to assist companies with new product innovations for use in HealthTech markets. Tom has been with CPI for 7 years, during which time he was responsible for the creation of a new CPI Innovation Centre, based at Sedgefield in the North East of England, focussing on the development of medical technologies. Tom has also worked in business development, project management and strategic marketing. Prior to joining CPI, he was CTO for an SME, which he co-founded, working on the manufacture of flexible circuit boards, microfluidic systems, micro-optic components and flexible displays. Tom is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a member of the UK photonics leadership group.
Andrew McCarthy
Andrew is a health economist with a focus on economic evaluation of new technologies and service provision to aid decision making. He has experience in the development and application of economic evaluation for resource allocation decisions within health and social care systems. In particular, he has been involved in clinical research projects investigating the use of new technologies in surgery such as endovascular stent graft devices to treat thoracic aneurysms, or the use of robotic-assisted surgery to perform hysterectomies.
His particular interests include:
- Implementation of new technologies and new methods of working
- Evaluation of changes in social care provision
- Exploring the use of large, linked data in economic evaluation and the application of causal
inference methodologies
Dr Angela Bate
Angela is an Associate Professor in Health Economics at Northumbria University. She has a national and international reputation in the development and application of health economic methods in complex (public health) evaluations. Angela’s research interests are around the use of health economics in public health evaluation and commissioning. Angela has published widely in this area as well as leading and contributing to a number of national funded research council, Department of Health, and NIHR research grants. Angela’s recent funding successes represent innovative developments in health economic methodological research in ‘realist economic evaluation’, working in collaboration with realist methodologists to conduct initial research to study the feasibility of developing realist economic evaluation methods within a range of applied complex evaluations. Furthermore, Angela’s research in the area of public health evaluation seeks to integrate and study the application of boarder social measures of benefits and outcomes utilising methods such as Social Return on Investment (SROI) and Social Network Analysis.
Professor Mike Lewis
Michael Lewis is Joint Director for the NIHR i4i and SBRi Healthcare programmes as well as being Professor of Life Science Innovation at the University of Birmingham.
Michael has had an extensive industrial background in life sciences and digital innovation in healthcare having previously held senior roles at Align Technology (Amsterdam), Boston Scientific (Paris), C.R. Bard (New Jersey), Sybron (Switzerland) and Becton Dickinson (UK) and was President of Gambro (Sweden) in the £3bn public to private buyout. Michael has worked for numerous private equity and venture capital organisations and has a deal sheet valued at over $5bn including IPOs in London and New York.
His industry experience covers pharma, biotech, digital, dental, devices, clinical trials and diagnostics. Currently, he is Chair of 3 life science companies all with a real emphasis on citizen focused, data and outcomes driven healthcare. He also sits on the Board of SNOMED, the global medical coding standardisation system, the Executive Board of Birmingham Health Partners and is a special advisor for NHSX.
At the university he lectures on innovation in life sciences and how this aligns with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development goals and the circular economy. He is also closely involved with delivering the new Birmingham Health Innovation campus, a £210m life science park under construction between the University of Birmingham and University Hospitals Birmingham.
Professor Yan Yiannakou
Yan is a consultant gastroenterologist at the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Director of the NIHR Patient Recruitment Centre in Newcastle. He has been a Director of R&D and has also served as Regional Clinical Lead for Commercial Research for the NIHR Local Clinical Research Network (NENC). His main interest is in improving access to clinical trials through community based participation, consent for contact registries and decentralised trials.
Rachel Morris
Rachel is an Associate Director at the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria, having previously been responsible for supporting companies and the economic growth workstream as Economic Growth Operations Manager.
Prior to working at the AHSN NENC, Rachel was a Research Operations Manager for the NIHR Clinical Research Network North East and North Cumbria, where she helped found the working medical technology group MedConnect North.
In this role, Rachel worked alongside world leading expert clinicians to offer a bespoke service to industry, providing guidance and assistance throughout the medical technology research and innovation pathway. Working with over 100 SMEs, Rachel helped companies form partnerships with the NHS to form research collaborations generating high quality evidence studies to progress their technologies to the next stage. As part of her role at the CRN she also operationally managed the set up and delivery of other clinical trials adopted onto the NIHR portfolio.
Prior to this, Rachel worked as a Trial Co-ordinator/Manager for The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, having started her career as a Medical Statistician for The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in 2009. She has a BSc in Mathematics and a MSc in Clinical Research.
Jody Nichols
Jody works for the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria as an Associate Director and leads on developing a collaborative ecosystem to support the AHSN’s Innovation Pathway. In addition Jody is also the National lead for Implementation of Clinical Digital Resource Collaborative.
Dr Shaun Wellburn
Shaun is currently employed, in a role co-funded with MedConnect North, as a Health Research Methodologist in the School of Health and Life Sciences at Teesside University. He graduated from the University of Sunderland in 2010 with a BSc (Hons) in Sport and Exercise Sciences. He went on to study for his PhD at Teesside University investing the information needs of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis patients and their families; he was awarded his PhD in 2017.
Shaun has been employed in a research capacity at Teesside University since 2014 and has worked on a variety of projects across a broad spectrum of disciplines. These include the evaluation of the North East of England Regional Back Pain and Radicular Pain Pathway evaluation and VR4Rehab projects. Shaun has published several peer reviewed journal articles and conference papers.
Professor Alan Batterham
Alan is an interdisciplinary research scientist with broad interests and expertise in physical activity, exercise and health outcomes, measurement and evaluation issues, and research design and biostatistics. He is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the Royal Statistical Society. Alan is also an Associate Editor of Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, a member of the Statistical Advisory Board of BMJ Open and the Editorial Board of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, and the Statistics Consultant for the three journals of the Physiological Society.
Craig Mower
Craig is the Project Manager for MedConnect North. He has four years of clinical research experience, plus 13 years of diagnostic pathology, working with a variety of cutting-edge instruments and analysers whilst regularly liaising with MedTech companies, device manufacturers, and clinicians. He read English at Teesside University, followed by an FdSc in Health and Social Care Practice. In his current role he supports MedTech studies including BEST, Nebula and Rescue.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Luella Trickett
Luella joined ABHI in 2019, with over 25 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and HealthTech industries. Her career has seen her hold numerous specialist manufacturing and commercial roles at Baxter Healthcare, with responsibility for a range of product portfolios across the HealthTech spectrum within the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa.
In 2012, Luella was seconded to the Department of Health for nine months as the Industry Liaison for the NHS Procurement Review, a role which saw her engage with government and the wider Life Sciences sector to facilitate the sharing of ideas and best practice.
From 2015, Luella led Baxter Healthcare’s Government Affairs and Public Policy agenda, where she was tasked with managing key policies impacting the HealthTech sector and the NHS – supporting change that enabled the adoption and spread of innovations that deliver whole-system value across healthcare settings.
Before joining ABHI, Luella Chaired the Association’s Public Affairs Policy Group, and has been a Director of the Board at the British Specialist Nutrition Association.
Andrea Burroughs
Andrea Burroughs is an Associate Director at the Newcastle Hospitals commercial enterprise team. With over 30 years’ experience working in the private and public sector, including 10 years as a board director, Andrea had a variety of commercial roles in the technology sector including 10 years at Microsoft (Europe, Middle East and Africa) prior to starting her own consultancy business, including a role as a non-executive director for an NHS acute trust. Prior to joining Newcastle’s commercial enterprise team, she worked as director of business development for an acute trust, commercial director for the Wessex Academic Health Science Network, most recently as health sector lead driving collaborative research and development opportunities between industry and academia.
Melanie Shield
Melanie is a Commercial Business Manager at the North East Innovation Lab. Melanie provides a dedicated point of contact for clients and commercial partners looking to engage the services of the lab. She works to identify client requirements, establish good relationships, develop service agreements and to market the lab.
Melanie has over 25 years’ experience in a variety of commercial roles in the private sector from start-ups to FTSE 250 companies. She has a wealth of experience in product development, launching products to market and driving commercial activity.
David Thorne
David has two current roles: Director of NHS Insight and Interaction at Mtech Access and Business Development Director at Well Up North Primary Care Network, covering north Northumberland and 80,000 patients.
Originally a nurse, he has occupied NHS roles for over 40 years and has held senior positions within both hospitals and commissioning organisations. He is a national authority on primary care working at scale having been a Chair and CEO of several primary care alliances. He is a past CCG Manager of the Year and has led multiple NHS service reviews, including as Programme Director of the original NHS 111 prototype scheme.
David has worked in senior pharma and MedTech market access roles for three leading companies and has provided health policy consultancy advice to more than 200 different companies in the UK and abroad.
Professor Sam Eldabe
Sam is an NHS consultant based at South Tees NHS Foundation Trust with 18 years’ experience. Throughout his career he have been an active user and researcher into the role of medical devices in improving patient care. His background in anaesthesia has given him a broad exposure to all classes of medical technologies from simple Class I devices to the more complex Class IIB. His work as a chronic pain treatment specialist has afforded him experience in research with various class III active implantable devices.