Main stage

UK e-Health Week attracts high profile speakers from across health and care to explore the latest in health IT and data.

The main stage is at the heart of the main exhibition floor and offers a mix of inspiring key note addresses and expert-led panel discussions, all with a sharp focus on policy, leadership and examples of IT implementation from every corner of the health system.

Inspiring speakers 

In 2017, main stage speakers included senior NHS leaders seeing in the NHS digital agenda, including Matthew Swindells, National Director: Operations and Information, Professor Keith McNeil, NHS CCIO Health and Social Care, Will Smart, NHS CIO, Harpreet Sood, Associate CCIO, Beverley Bryant, Director of Digital Transformation and Juliet Bauer, Director of Digital Experience.

The main stage also hosted senior leaders from outside the NHS, including Steven Roberts, Strategic Transformation Director and Vice Chair, Barclays UK, who led the bank's Digital Eagles programme, and HIMSS CEO, who announced the Five Countries e-Health Nursing Group - a platform that HIMSS is creating to support nurses across the UK and Ireland deliver the digital agenda.

Expert-led panel discussions 

We worked closely with NHS leaders and innovators from industry to curate main stage panels sessions: all of which provided targeted exploration of the biggest issues in health IT.

Topics included ambitions of the Global Digital Exemplar programme, chaired by Joe McDonald, CCIO, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, how we ensure digital transformation benefits patients not just the system with Nick Hopkinson, CIO, Devon Partnership NHS Trust, interoperability and integration, chaired by Will Smart, and meeting the challenges of paperless by 2020 with Keith McNeil and Dr Afzal Chaudhry, Chief Medical Information Officer, Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust.

Kate Granger Awards for Compassionate Care

We were honoured launch the 2017 Kate Granger Awards for Compassionate Care with Chief Nursing Officer for England Jane Cummings and Chris Pointon, husband of Dr Kate Granger MBE, and co-founder of #hellomynameis.

HIMSS is proud to support these important and impactful awards across the world and nowhere more so than in the NHS, where Kate’s work with #hellomynameis began and where it continues to grow.