Amit N. Thakker

President at Africa Health Federation

A visionary entreprenuer and an industry captain, Dr. Amit N. Thakker, has been a groundbreaking pioneer in the integration of private sector within the healthcare system inAfrica. Dr Thakker actively supports governments, corporates, health organisations and development partners to foster efective public private partnership initiatives towards improved health outcomes.
He is the executive chairman of Africa Health Business, president of Africa Healthcare Federation, and the immediate past chairman of Kenya Healthcare Federation and has served as a director at LumiraDx, Seven Seas Technology, AMREF Flying Doctors. Action Aid and Ghanima Limited.
As an active member of several insitutions including international business group YPO Gold (Nairobi Chapter), Dr. Thakker also chairs the University of Nairobi Alumni Medical Chapter and serves as an advisor to Asia Africa Investing & Consulting Ltd, Coalition for Blood in Africa (CoBA) and Ministry of Health, Kenya.
Dr. Thakker founded Avenue Healthcare, a Kenyan based integrated private health service provider in 1995 which lead him to receive the “BestMale Entreprenuer of the Year” award by Rotary International in 1999. He also won the “Best CEO ” award by Titans Global in the Business and Professional services category in 2017 and proudly received the Chairman’s Award for Kenya Medical Asociation in 2004.
Africa Health Business is a health consultancy, advisory and investment firm that aims to improve acces to quality afordable healthcare in Africa.

Anett Ruszanov

Programme and Policy Director, EHMA

Anett directs the development of EHMA’s policy positions and maximises the impact of EU-funded projects for the benefit of the health management ecosystem. As a member of the Senior Management Team, she ensures that the most recent, important and relevant knowledge on health management creates the conditions for high-quality, accessible, value-based and patient-centred care all over Europe. Anett is involved in shaping and promoting EHMA’s policy positions in projects and towards European institutions and stakeholders, she also oversees the design of new proposals. Anett enjoys being active, hiking, biking, cooking and baking for family and friends. She is a native Hungarian, and speaks English and French.

Ann Mond Johnson

CEO at American Telemedicine Association

Ann Mond Johnson is CEO of the American Telemedicine Association, overseeing the only association focused completely on advancing the adoption of telehealth. Ann is a leading voice representing a healthcare platform that many see as one of the few bright spots in the COVID-19 pandemic, focused on federal and state policy initiatives needed to ensure permanent access to telehealth services, so that everyone has access to safe, effective, and appropriate care when and where they need it. With a diverse membership including leading healthcare delivery systems, academic institutions, technology solution providers and payers, as well as partner organizations and alliances, the ATA is working to integrate virtual care into emerging value-based delivery models. This year, the ATA launched the first-ever Telehealth Awareness Week, bringing together telehealth champions and supporters from every sector of healthcare to underscore the growing value of telehealth and its critical role in care delivery.

Annemieke Ålenius

Deputy Director General at The Swedish eHealth Agency

Since 2018 Deputy Director General at the Swedish eHealth Agency with main responsibility for national co-ordination and strategy and she is representing Sweden in the EU eHealth Network. June 30th this year Annemieke was also appointed as a Special Commissioner for Health Data as a National Interest – a legal framework for interoperability.
Annemieke has a thorough knowledge about e-health as well as the Swedish healthcare system. Issues as interoperability, primary and secondary use of data, distance monitoring etcetera are on her agenda. The EU Digital Covid Certificate, Joint Action Towards the European Health Data Space (TEHDAS) and XeHealth are other areas of responsibility. She is the Swedish expert representative in EUs eHealth Network.
She has also been in charge of the Electronic Medical Record in Uppsala county (2013-2018) and before that been appointed as Chief Administrative Officer at the Uppsala University Hospital (2000-2013). During this appointment she was a member of the Board of Directors.
Annemieke has been the Swedish National Expert on Science and Technology Indicators at the OECD and had during a period of 3 years an assignment as the Vice-Chairman for the Working Group for Statistics on the Information Society.
Annemieke has a Master Degree in Social Sciences at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Her Master Thesis 1988 was about the co-operation between the EU and Sweden in the field of information technology, in particular the Esprit programme.

Annick Faes

VP Chief Information Officer, MedTech EMEA, Johnson & Johnson

Arianna Dagliati

PhD, Assistant Professor at University of Pavia, Italy (Brainteaser project)

Arianna Dagliati (she/her) is Assistant Professor at the Department of industrial and information engineering, The University of Pavia (Italy).
She has a background in Engineering, getting her Master thesis near the Stafanelli Lab in 2007. She worked in public health until 2013, when she started a PhD program in Bioengineering. She was visiting students near the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. She was appointed at the University of Manchester for a postdoc position and promoted research fellow in 2018. Since 2020 she is Assistant Professor at the University of Pavia, where she is working on several national and international projects for the development of mining approaches for enabling the recognition of temporal patterns and electronic phenotypes in longitudinal clinical data. She is part of the 4CE international consortium for electronic health record data-driven studies of the COVID-19 pandemic and appointed as AIME (society of AI in medicine) Board Member. She won the Rising star award in 2021.

Andrea Barbiero

 Digital Health & Social Innovation Expert Consultant in Co-Salud & Argentinian Ecosystem Coordinator TISAC

Andrea has a degree in Health Services Administration (UCES, Argentina) and a Master in Health Management (IESyBS, Spain). She is consulting professor in several Digital Health Masters from several Spanish and Latin American academic institutions. Since her professional beginnings, Andrea has focused her activity on strategic consulting, accompanying the different agents of the health ecosystem in transiting their challenges related to digital transformation and innovation. She has collaborated in process, technology and innovation consulting projects for different clients: International Organizations, Ministries of Health, Hospitals, Health Insurers, and others health Companies/StartUps, in Spain and in Latin America. Since 2014, she is leading Co-Salud, a boutique consulting platform focused particularly on promoting open and collaborative innovation within the health sector. She is OuiShare Connector, a global community and a think tank related to the digital and platform economy where she promotes the values ​​of a more collaborative and participatory health. In 2016, a new project began in conjunction with referents innovation professionals, building SalusCoop, a citizen cooperative of health data for science. Andrea is currently the promoter and the Leader of an Argentinian Digital Health community and also is the president of the civil association TISAC, where promotes the meeting of the different actors of digital health in Ibero-America. Since 2022, she is one of the Barcelona Health Hub Ambassadors, a recognized European Digital Health Hub.

Andy Bleaden

Community Director, ECHAlliance

Andy Bleaden has had long career in both funding and social care going back over 25 years and has been recently working in Greater Manchester at Stockport where he specialised in Adult Social Care, Robotics, Telehealth and Telemedicine, Regeneration and Dementia. He also formed alliances with pan European groups most recently with the EIP-AHA, Coral and Covenant for Demographic Change.
In addition, he has also been working as an External Expert for the European Commission since 2013 and also with the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) on the new Health KIC and also working for the new Urban Innovation Actions as an expert.
He brings a wealth of experience and skills in securing and management of strategic external funding, procurement, innovation funding and forming and development large and complex partnerships across Europe.

Angela Brand 

Director, The Digital Health Society

Angela Brand, MD PhD MPH (USA) is Full Professor in the Department of International Health and Founding Director of the Institute for Public Health Genomics at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) at Maastricht University as well as Professorial Fellow at UNU-MERIT (United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology), Maastricht, The Netherlands. She is also Dr. T.M.A. Pai Endowment Chair on Public Health Genomics and Head of the Department of Public Health Genomics at the Manipal School of Life Sciences as well as Adjunct Professor at the Prasanna School of Public Health at Manipal University (MAHE), India.

Before she worked in the clinics, at various academic institutions and in governmental bodies in the USA and Germany. She is Paediatrician, Specialist in Public Health Medicine, holds a PhD in pathology, a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Johns Hopkins University, USA, and received her habilitation from the University of Bremen, Germany, focusing on Health Technology Assessment.

She has been the pioneer of Public Health Genomics in Europe and coordinated and established successfully this field in more than 15 EU Member States within the last years via the Public Health Genomics European Network (PHGEN). She has been founder and Editor-in-Chief (2009-2017) of Public Health Genomics, the leading international journal focusing on the responsible and timely translation of genome-based knowledge and technologies into public health, health policies, and health systems. She is Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, USA, of the 21st Century Trust of the Wellcome Trust, UK, and Member of the New York Academy of Sciences.

For the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2017 she was leading Task Force 2 “Data Donors and Citizen-Controlled Data Governance” to prepare for the Digital Health Society in Europe and beyond. Currently she is Member of the Board of Directors of the Digital Health Society (https://thedigitalhealthsociety.com) enabled by the European Connected Health Alliance (ECHAlliance, www.echalliance.com), Director of the European Centre for Public Health Genomics (ECPHG), Expert on „Big Data“ of the International Consortium Personalised Medicine (IC PerMed, www.icpermed.eu) jointly coordinated by the European Commission, over 26 European Member States and Canada, and Member of the Expert Group “Global Health Foresight” of the Science Division of the World Health Organization (WHO).

She serves as Expert for the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the OECD, WHO, the EC, the German Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), Genome Canada, Science Europe, AXA Research among others. She collaborates with industry partners such as IBM, Roche, Pfizer, AMGEN, Novartis, MSD, Bayer HealthCare. Her research focus is on Public Health Genomics, Personalised Medicine & Personal Health & Care, Translational Research, AI and Big Data Analytics for Public Health, PPP, Innovation Management, and Data Governance & Cooperative Health Ecosystems (e.g. Health Data Cooperatives).

Barbara Di Camillo

Full Professor in Computer Science, Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova

Barbara Di Camillo is Full Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova. Her research activity is centered in the development and application of advanced modeling, data mining and machine learning methods for high-throughput biological data analysis in the field of bioinformatics and digital health. She has been PI and WP leader of projects funded by the EU, Italy and industry and has received numerous awards in particular in the field of reverse-engineering and machine learning applied to clinical and biological data. Currently she is the technical and scientific manager of Brainteaser H2020 European project “Bringing Artificial Intelligence Home for a Better Care of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Multiple Sclerosis”

Bleddyn Rees

Chai, Digital Health Society

Bleddyn is an experienced commercial and international healthcare lawyer with over 30 years’ experience advising on outsourcings, privatisations, complex contracting and projects. In healthcare he has advised on healthcare regulations, commissioning, procurement and contracting for healthcare services, partnerships, alliances and collaborations in the health and care sectors in the UK, Europe, Middle East and the US.

He has unique experience for a private sector lawyer having spent almost four years seconded to the Commercial Directorate of the UK Department of Health as General Counsel in the early 2000’s. Bleddyn has advised Health Ministers and through his secondment he has a detailed understanding of the NHS and the UK health sector.

Bleddyn is Deputy Chair of the European Connected Health Alliance and Chair of the Digital Health Society. Both these organisations are helping to transform health and care services internationally.  Bleddyn Chairs the Digital Working Group of All Policies for a Healthy Europe a think tank set up by Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Philips and Randstad based in Brussels. He has a special interest in Digital Health, health data and Medtech.

Brian O’Connor

Chair, ECHAlliance

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Brian developed his career as a consultant, manager and investor. He has worked in the UK, US and Hong Kong and has significant experience as a company director in a variety of industries.

He is currently providing strategic advice to Governments, International organizations and companies on the challenges facing healthcare in general and specifically on the Connected Health opportunity. He created the European Connected Health Alliance, a not for profit organisation which connects Governments, Industry,Research Institutes, Health Services, Patient Groups etc through a Global Network of Ecosystems.

He is Chair of a number of innovative companies and an investor in start ups.

Carina Dantas

Senior International Project Manager, ECHAlliance

Carina Dantas has a degree in Law and post graduate studies in Psychotherapy, and over 20 years-experience in health and social care. Highly interested in data sharing governance, mainly in empowering citizens and fostering awareness in this area.

Besides being Senior International Projects Manager for the ECHAlliance, she is also a member of the management team of the The Digital Health Society

She is the Chair of the COST Action NET4Age-Friendly, Coordinator of the Stakeholders Network on SHAFE – Smart Healthy Age-friendly Environments and the Portuguese Network on SHAFE, Vice-President of the European Covenant on Demographic Change and Main Coordinator of group D4 of the EIP-AHA.

She is evaluator/reviewer for the European Commission, Eureka, AAL and EIT Digital; member of the Expert Team developing the EU Ethics framework for the ICT Profession, as external expert for CEN/CENELEC; and Team Leader of the group of experts designing the Reference Guidelines in the Field of Ethics, Data Privacy and Security, contracted by the AAL Programme.

Also, Carina is CEO of SHINE 2Europe, member of the Standing Committee on Policy and Advocacy of the International Health Literacy Association, the Advisory Board of Homes4life and reviewer of ICF Journal and MDPI. She has written over 200 proposals for funded projects and implemented/managed several of them, for different funding programmes.

Cristinela Velicu

Director Vaccines Policy, Key Markets Europe & Canada, MSD

A seasoned professional with postgraduate education and training in political science, public policy and business administration, Cristinela has diverse global public health experience in both the public and private sectors. As Director HPV Global Policy Strategy at MSD, she leads HPV vaccination policy strategy and works closely with the global community to foster evidence-based HPV immunization policies, including public policies to advance elimination of HPV related cancers. Cristinela holds an EMBA from the University of Hull in the UK and a PhD in Political Sciences, an MA in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and a BA in Political Sciences from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest.

Dave Milestone

Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Co

Dave Milestone is a Senior Advisor in McKinsey & Company’s social sector practice where he focuses on health innovation in low and middle-income countries. He is also the co-founder and Board Chair of the Aspen Institute’s Management Partnership for Health (AMP Health) partnering to strengthen health systems in Africa. Previously, Dave led the US Agency for International Development’s Center for Innovation and Impact (CII). Dave has held various strategy and innovation roles at Stryker in India and worked as a management consultant with AT Kearney. He holds an MBA from Northwestern University, an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

David Lawson MCIPS

Director of Medical Technology – Commercial, Strategy and Policy Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC)

Newly appointed Med Tech Director for DHSC with responsibility for setting the direction of future UK MedTech policy and implementation of new Med Tech Strategy. Previous Chief Procurement Officer for 21 years at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Double winner of the Supply Chain Excellence Award for Supply Chain Innovation (2008) and Urban Logistics (2021). Procurement lead for national £10b Increasing Capacity framework agreement (2020) and £2b South East London pathology service transformation (2021).

Dipak Kalra

President, European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (I~HD)

Professor Dipak Kalra, PhD, FRCGP, FBCS, plays a leading international role in research and development of Electronic Health Records, including the reuse of EHRs for research. A former London general practitioner, he has over the past 25 years led the development of standards on EHR interoperability, personal health records and data protection, and leads multiple EU Horizon 2020 and IMI projects in these areas. Dipak is President of The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data (www.i-hd.eu). This is a multi-stakeholder not for profit body that supports healthcare and research organisations, and patients, to capture and reuse better quality health data. Dipak is Professor of Health Informatics at University College London, and Visiting Professor at the University of Gent.

Eddie O’Neill

Director CCS Solution, Department of Health Northern Ireland

Dr Eddie O’Neill is a doctor in pre-hospital urgent care, and a technologist (Director of COVID Certification Service). Eddie has led delivery of several digital products during the pandemic; COVIDCare NI (symptom triage tool promoting appropriate self-management – delivered second in the world – March 2020); StopCOVID NI (proximity app – first in the UK, July 2020); COVIDCert NI (fully digital solution delivered in 24 days of development – linked to an AI automated identity check solution). As a result of COVID certification, NI has 73% of the population 16+ digitally engaged with services, and 61% identity checked with a secure digital account in active use. He will discuss plans in NI to leverage this for future public sector delivery.

Giovanna Ferrari

Regional Labeling Lead, Pfizer

Project Lead, Gravitate Health project

After completing a PhD in molecular biology at University College London, and a period of post-doctoral research at Kings College London, Giovanna moved into the regulatory sector of the pharmaceutical industry, specialising in the area of labelling and product information since 2009; she currently works within International Labeling Group at Pfizer with regional responsibility for Europe. Giovanna has extensive experience in the field of local labelling across the wider European region, and through this has developed a broad understanding of current regulatory requirements and trends impacting labelling. A particular area of interest of relevance to Gravitate Health is electronic labelling and in connection with this topic Giovanna is also active in a range of regional industry activities/forums. She has been involved from the earliest stages of the development of the Gravitate-Health initiative in coordinating the group of industry partners which developed the original concept and call for an IMI integrated digital health information project, intended to transform the way in which patients access, understand and apply health information in managing their health. She is now the industry Project Lead for Gravitate Health and is at the heart of strategic and project planning for this patient-focussed digital health initiative.

Heather Smith

Operations Director, ECHAlliance

Heather manages the day to day operations of European Connected Health Alliance (ECHAlliance). Previously an Office Manager for a multi-national company Heather has over 25 years experience in administration. Based in Belfast Heather is involved on the ground with the Northern Ireland Ecosystem.

Hrvoje Belani

Head of Sector for Information Systems Implementation and Improvement, Directorate for e-Health, Ministry of Health, Croatia

Hrvoje Belani acts as a head of Sector for Information Systems Implementation and Improvement at the Directorate for e-Health in the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Croatia. He is experienced software engineer, ICT expert and project manager in e-health, representing Croatia in eHealth Network, as well as various international, EU-funded projects, like epSOS, INCA, EXPAND and ASSESS CT. He is a member of eHealth Security Experts Group within ENISA and a full member of HL7 Croatia and Croatian Medical Informatics Society. He gained his Master of Science degree in electrical engineering, majoring in telecommunications and informatics, from University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. He has finished Academy for Political Development of the Council of Europe, the UN Academy and Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education. He is also an adjunct senior lecturer at VERN’ University of Applied Sciences in Zagreb teaching IT project management and an adjunct associate at the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia, teaching medical informatics at postgraduate specialist study of epidemiology.

Ilias Iakovidas

Adviser at DG CONNECT, European Commission

Ilias works on maximising the benefits of green digital transformation, in cooperation with several Commission services and external stakeholders. He also works on digitalisation for circular economy, e.g. on the digital product passport as introduced in the Eco-design for Sustainable Product Regulation. Ilias has initiated the European Green Digital Coalition that works together with the European Parliament Pilot project on science-based methods to estimate the net environmental impact of digital solutions and on guidelines for green digital transformation in different sectors. Before 2017 Ilias has contributed to the EU Agenda of eHealth and ICT for Active and Healthy Ageing for over 20 years. Areas he pioneered include digitally supported Integrated Care, ‘Virtual Physiological Human’, Personal Health Systems and Electronic Health Records.

Isabelle Zablit-Schmitz

International Director and eHealth Europe at Ministry of Health in France

eHealth Europe and International Director, French Ministry of Health.
Administratrice IHEST. Membre Institut Iconomie. Experte associée au CNRS. Professeur vacataire Université Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne.
ex Administratrice SYNTEC NUMERIQUE, Présidente Programme #5000StartUps & co-Présidente du Comité Santé et Administratrice FEFIS, Membre du Conseil National du Numérique en Santé.

Jelena Malinina

Data Director at EURORDIS

Jelena Malinina is a Patient Data Director at EURORDIS. Her role is to lead EURORDIS work on data and represent rare disease patient voice in digitalisation of healthcare. Prior to joining EURORDIS, Jelena worked for the European Consumer Organisation, the World Health Organisation, healthcare consultancy, patient organisations and governmental public health organisation. Through her work she developed expertise in healthcare digitalisation, personal health data protection and security, artificial intelligence, medical devices, healthcare systems innovation and public health advocacy. Jelena is a member of the European Commission’s ehealth Stakeholder Working Group.

Jenny Thomas 

Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Peppy

Jenny Thomas is an advisor to health tech startups. She led the set up of DigitalHealth.London and ran their internationally renowned health tech accelerator for several years. She is particularly knowledgeable about women + digital health and has supported many startups in this space. She is passionate about levelling up healthcare for all through a gendered lens.

Jim McLaughlin

Director Engineering Research Institute and Nibec Centre at Ulster University

Prof McLaughlin, a physicist, and a Fellow of the Inst. of Physics has developed significant initiatives within research, technology transfer, outreach and teaching over these past 30 years. Presently, as a Professor he is the Director of the Engineering Research Institute and Director of NIBEC. His salient disciplines address Connected Health (CH) and related bio-sensing applications. He was recently awarded an OBE for his services to Research and Economic Development in NIre, as well a numerous research and innovation awards. He has attained in excess of three hundred publications (H index 38) and he has been honored as an invited speaker at over sixty International Conferences and he has attracted over £44M of high quality funding from bodies such as EPSRC, Wellcome Trust, EU, NSF, Royal Soc., DoE; Invest NI as well as industry. In recent years his over-arching strategy is to develop a strong CH Platform within NIre and the EU. This work involves linking bioengineering and computing sciences with sensor technology developed within NIBEC and thus facilitating clinically-led research initiatives to benefit the healthcare sector. Affiliated Centres have now been set up including CHIC, ECME, Biodevices Lab, CACR and the new Healthcare Technology Hub. A holder of over 30 patents, including one for the world’s best selling disposable medical electrode, he has successfully co-founded a set of spin-out companies including the highly successful CH company – Intelesens Ltd and SiSaf Ltd. He has held positions on committees such: RAE 2008 Materials Panel; a Matrix Panel chair; EPSRC College; NanoIreland Task Force/Chaired the Nanomaterials Panel; Adv. panel to MSSI; Chair of European CH Campus; InnovateUK KTN Health Technologies Adv. Panel and NI TechStart. Notable recent achievements include leading a 2017 Qualcomm Xprize Tricorder Team to joint third place (out of 360); 2017 Healthcare NI Innovation Award; Distinguished Research(2013) and Impact (2016) Awards etc.

Joseph Kvedar

Editor In Chief at npj Digital Medicine

Dr. Joe Kvedar has been driving innovation, creating the market, and gaining acceptance for connected health for nearly three decades. He is now applying his expertise, insights, and influence to advancing adoption of telehealth and virtual care technologies at the national level. Dr. Kvedar continues to guide the transformation of healthcare delivery as a respected thought leader, author, and convener.

Dr. Kvedar is Immediate Past Chair of the Board of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). As Editor-in-Chief of npj Digital Medicine, a Nature Research journal, he is working to establish the evidence base needed to guide innovation and the implementation of virtual care.

He is co-chair the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Digital Medicine Payment Advisory Group (DMPAG), which works to ensure widespread coverage of telehealth and remote patient monitoring, and successfully established several new provider codes for telehealth reimbursement through the CPT process. Dr. Kvedar is also a member of the AAMC’s (Association of American Medical Colleges) telehealth committee, creating tools that will enable medical schools and residency programs to integrate telehealth into the training of future practitioners.

Dr. Kvedar is the author of two books: The Internet of Healthy Things and The New Mobile Age: How Technology Will Extend the Healthspan and Optimize the Lifespan. The cHealth Blog provides his insights and vision for connected health.

Dr. Kvedar is a Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School.

Julien Venne

Director, Digital Health Society

Naturally evolving in an international environment (fluent in English, French and Spanish), passionate about digital transformation & social impact, Julien is an experienced C-level executive with track records in large corporates, start-ups, governments & public authorities, hospitals, universities and non-profit organisations. Highly-skilled in strategic thinking, Julien supports the innovation in public and private organisations, around public policies, services & investments design, business modelling, market access & business development tactics, ecosystems building, customers’ engagement, marketing & communication. As an entrepreneur or intrapreneur, Julien is designing digital products and services aiming to improve people’s life such as personalised health and wellbeing programmes, behaviours change strategies and solutions, digital platforms and mobile apps, GovTech & CivicTech, smart human cities, etc. As a researcher, Julien is affiliated to the United Nations University (UNU-MERIT), the University of Maastricht (Netherlands) and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (India). His researches focus on digital transformation, data governance and digital trustworthiness, digital democracy, behavioural sciences, health and wellbeing, public and international health. Involved in ECHAlliance almost since its beginning, Julien has been Director of Strategy and Innovation during 5 years and now he’s Board Director in charge of the Digital Health Observatory (DHO) and the scientific content of our activities, as well as of the deployment of partnerships and ecosystems in Latin America. He’s also Board member of the Digital Health Society (DHS) and member of the Council of the Global Health Connector Partnership. Julien is also regularly speaking at international events.

Karolina Mackiewicz

Innovation Director, ECHAlliance

Karolina Mackiewicz (MA Political Sciences, MA Futures Studies) has over 12 years of professional experience in international projects in the area of health and wellbeing.
She worked for the WHO European Healthy Cities network, leading the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Cities and Urban Health in the Baltic Sea Region, and the Development Manager at MyData Global – an international non-for-profit advocating for a human-centric approach to personal data. When it comes to digital health, she is especially interested in how technology and data can support the sustainable health systems of tomorrow, health literacy and socio-economic determinants of health.

Karolina has developed and led numerous international projects and cooperated with the EC, OECD, World Bank and other key regional and national stakeholders.
Her professional mission is to bring bridges between the different sectors for a more just and sustainable future.

Karolina Snell

University Lecturer in Sociology, University of Helsinki

Karoliina Snell (University of Helsinki) is a sociologist specialising in science and technology studies, sociology of health and public understanding of science. Her current research focuses on politics and practices of health data and genomics. Ongoing research projects include “Human centred data economy – true or fiction?” and “Data literacy for responsible decision-making”. She is actively involved in busting data myths and discussions on research ethics in different fields. She is the Chair of University of Helsinki’s Ethical Review Board in the Humanities and Social and Behavioural Sciences and a member of Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence, FCAI’s Ethical Advisory Board.

Martin Curley

Director of the Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at the Health Service Executive (HSE)

Martin Curley is Director of the Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at the Health Service Executive (HSE), helping enable the digital transformation of Ireland’s health service. Most recently Martin was Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the HSE. Prior to joining the HSE Martin was Senior Vice President and group head for Global Digital Practice at Mastercard. Previously Martin was vice president at Intel Corporation and Director/GM of Intel Labs Europe, Intel’s network of more than 50 research labs which he helped grow across the European region. He also served as a senior principal engineer at Intel Labs Europe leading Intel’s research and innovation engagement with the European Commission and the broader European Union research ecosystem. Prior to this Curley was Global Director of IT Innovation and Director of IT Strategy and Technology at Intel. Earlier in his Intel career, he held a number of senior positions for Intel in the United States and Europe. He also worked in research and management positions at GE in Ireland and Philips in the Netherlands.

Martin has a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and a master’s degree in business studies, both from University College Dublin, Ireland. He received his Ph.D. in information systems from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Curley is the author of eight books on technology management for value, innovation and entrepreneurship. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, the British Computer Society and, the Irish Computer Society.

Martin is co-founder of the Innovation Value Institute at Maynooth University, a unique industry-academia collaboration driving research and development of advanced IT and Digital maturity frameworks. He was previously a visiting scholar at MIT Sloan Centre for Information Systems Research and a visiting research fellow at the CERN Open Lab in Geneva. He was the inaugural winner of the Engineers Ireland Innovation engineer of the year in 2006 and was jointly awarded European Chief Technology Officer of the year for 2015-2016.

Mathilde Demory

Health Advisor for the Nice Mayor and President, Christian Estrosi

Michelle Evans

Talent Lead and Programme Director, Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh

Michelle Evans is Talent Lead for the DDI Health and Social Care programme at the Usher Institute, Director of the online MSc in Data Science for Health and Social Care.

Shaping the future of a major new health & social care programme for Edinburgh & South East Scotland as part of the DDI initiative at the University of Edinburgh. The ‘Talent’ component of the health and social care sector programme includes data science enhancement of the undergraduate medical degree to a portfolio of master’s degrees and the development of continuing professional development (CPD). The programme ambition is to enable students and health and social care professionals realise the value of data to benefit the health and wellbeing of citizens.

Michelle has over fifteen years’ experience delivering clinical research education and training in the 
higher education and health-care sectors. She brings an innovative approach to curriculum design and a proven track record of managing, delivering and leading successful education provision across an extensive postgraduate and continuing professional development (CPD) teaching portfolio. Michelle established and designed the MSc Clinical Trials online programme in 2013. She has taught a diverse international audience of clinicians, researchers and healthcare professionals in the design, management, analysis, and reporting of clinical trials. She also designed and developed the national education programme at the Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility, reacting to changing priorities and educational needs of clinical researchers and health professionals in Scotland and the UK.

Nigel Hughes

Scientific Director, Observational Health Data Analytics/Epidemiology, Johnson & Johnson

Nigel Hughes has a thirty-six year career spanning the NHS in the UK (16 years), NGOs and patient organisations (10 years) and within the pharmaceutical industry (18 years). He has worked clinically in HIV and viral hepatitis, liver disease, and in sales & marketing, medical affairs, market access and health economics, R&D, precision medicine, advanced diagnostics, health IT and Real World Data/Real World Medicine. His experience covers clinical, education, as an advisor, consulting, communications and lobbying over the years. He is currently the Project Lead for the IMI2 European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN), and was Platform Co-Lead for the IMI1 European Medical Information Framework (EMIF), as well as consulting on numerous projects and programmes in the domain of RWD/RWE.

Oscar Zanutto

ISRAA-Fabbrica Europa Coordinator, Faber

Oscar Zanutto is a psychologist of work and organizations coordinating FABER www.fabbricaeuropa.eu an Innovation Hub dedicated to EU Projects on social innovation in older field. Senior Project Manager in several European Projects related to ageing, ICT innovation in care and seniors housing. His skills are devoted to networking, consortium building and project management with a focus on the design of innovative care services for older people.Trainer at the University Masters programmes for psychologists managed by Padua University. He is author of “La leadership in RSA” (2013), and “La Bussiness Intelligence in RSA” Maggioli Editore (2015), “SEFAC journey” edited by “Hein Raat, Stefania Macchione, Oscar Zanutto (2021), “DevOps for Trustworthy IoT Systems” Now Publisher (2021). Speaker in several events dedicated to longevity topics. Aging2.0 Network Treviso’s Chapter Ambassador; SAFE EU Network Coordinator, ECHAlliance Treviso’s Ecosystem Coordinator.

Päivi Sillanaukee

Ambassador for Health and Wellbeing, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

Päivi Sillanaukee (MD, PhD, eMBA) is the thematic Ambassador for Health and Wellbeing at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland Previously she has served as Director-General and Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Deputy Mayor and Director of Social and Health Services in the City of Tampere, and held clinical and managerial positions in the Pirkanmaa Hospital District. She has worked on policies to promote public health, social protection, gender equality, innovation and digitalization. She has represented Finland in the WHO Executive Board since May 2018 and served as its first and third Vice Chair from 2018 to 2020. She is the co-chair of the Alliance for Health Security Cooperation (AHSC), member of the Steering Group of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), member of Health Advisory Board of the UN Global Pulse Finland, Member of the HIMSS Board of Directors and Member of the I-DAIR inaugural Board.

Rachel Dunscombe

Board Director, the Digital Health Society

Rachel Dunscombe is CEO of the NHS Digital Academy and global lead for the KLAS Arch collaborative – a group of organisations creating academic quality evidence for Digitisation. She was formerly the CIO of the Salford Royal/NCA Group one of the 2 most digitally mature organisations in the NHS. She has worked across the health, care system as well as in the private sector and Europe. She is currently visiting professor at Imperial College London and a member of the UK government’s AI Council.

Rajendra Pratap Gupta

Founder of the Health Parliament – India

Rajendra Pratap Gupta (Rajendra) is a public policy expert who has been contributing to policy making for over a decade.

Rajendra has worked with some of the largest organisations across the world and was nominated to the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum for 2012-2014 in recognition of his work. He has served at senior-most levels at fortune 20 & fortune 500 companies in India. Besides, he has been invited by global organizations like the United Nations, UNESCO, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, World Health Organization, World Economic Forum, ITU ( oldest UN body), United States of America, Govt. of Japan, Algeria, Finland & Bangladesh, and also by the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Human Resource Development , Ministry of Labour and Employment & The Planning Commission – Government of India, for his views on diverse range of topics. He played an important role in drafting public policies and became the youngest person to draft the election manifesto of BJP . He also played a key role in drafting the BJP’s Lok Sabha Election Manifesto in 2014. He has played an important role in drafting the National Health Policy 2017, National Education Policy, the policy ( schemes ) for Building & other Construction Workers (BOCW) – Ministry of Labour & Employment & the State Health Policy for Uttar Pradesh. He is the founder of HIMSS India , Disease Management Association of India , Continua India , PCHA India and the Government Industry Dialogue Initiative. He was recognised for his contribution in 2012 by the sheriff of Los Angeles; named the ‘Thought Leader of the Year’ three years in a row by ICT Post; Featured amongst the ’25 living Legends of Healthcare in India’ and nominated to World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council. He has authored five best-selling books 1)Healthcare Reforms in India – Making up for the lost decades 2) Your Vote is Not Enough 3) Your Degree is Not Enough 4) Tough Choices & Hard Decisions- Rebuilding India : The Next 25 Years 5) Digital Health – Truly Transformational.

Currently, he divides his time between public policy work and consultancy / advisory roles across geographies.

Sanna Rimpiläinen

Research & Skills Manager, Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre, DHI Scotland

Dr Sanna Rimpiläinen, Research and Skills Manager at the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) in Glasgow, leads on one of DHI’s key strategic areas, Skills and Future Workforce Development agenda. This work focusses on the development of a future pipeline of talent to support the digital transformation of health and care services in Scotland, engaging with a vast network of partners in schools, further and higher education, in digital health and care industry, the health and social care sectors, Scottish government and the third sector. She also manages the DHI’s Research and Knowledge Management team, whose outputs inform and underpin work carried out by the DHI and our partners. The team also administers master’s studentship funding in digital health and care for the Scottish universities, working to strengthen that domain across the Scottish education landscape.

Dr Rimpiläinen has a PhD in Education. Her work at the DHI pulls together the different strands of her career, including interdisciplinary research expertise and interest in workforce development questions with different aspects of technological innovations from inception and production to appropriation and use in diverse learning and working practices.

Sathy Rajasekharan

Co-Executive Director, Jacaranda Health

Tapani Piha

Special Adviser, Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health & Sitra

Tapani Piha worked in the European Commission from 2001, serving as Head of Unit for 14 years. Since 2019, he has advised the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra on digital health, use of health data and the EU. In the Commission he was responsible, inter alia, for digital transformation in health, the European Reference Networks for rare diseases, Directive on patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare, as well as developing policies on Health Technology Assessment (HTA). He has a medical specialist degree in public health. He served the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and coordinated Finland’s EU policies in health during 1995-2001. At the WHO Regional Office for Europe in 1989-94 he was responsible for the Action Plan for a Tobacco-Free Europe.

Tobias Silberzahn

Partner, McKinsey & Company

Tobias Silberzahn is a trained biochemist and immunologist and works as a Partner in McKinsey’s Berlin office where he is a member of the Healthcare and Innovation Practice. The focus areas of his work are healthcare innovation, health tech business-building and digital transformation.

Tobias leads the global Health Tech Network, a community of >1500 health tech CEOs/founders and 500 investors and corporate health tech leaders. As part of his work, Tobias co-publishes the “eHealth Monitor Germany”, an annual book about the digitization of the German health system.

Within McKinsey, Tobias leads the Health & Wellbeing program for employees, focused on sleep, nutrition, stress management and fitness, that was recently awarded the Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Award in Gold.

Tudor Pitulac

Manager – Research Projects DivisionManager – Research Projects Division at OpenSky Data Systems

Professor Tudor Pitulac has an academic background that goes back a quarter of a century. The major focus was on community development, mainly in development/intervention projects. He published 6 books and more than 60 scientific articles. For two decades he managed nationally and internationally funded projects. Project Management Professional certified since 2012. His interest in the very specific area of intersection between technology and society brought him to the ICT industry in 2019.

He is leading the R&D Division at OpenSky Data Systems Ireland. In 2021 he obtained a Higher Diploma in Science in Computing at the National College of Ireland.

Verena Thaler

Digital Health Manager, Medtecheurope

Verena joined MedTech Europe as Manager for Digital Health in January 2022. There, she strengthens MedTech Europe’s contributions to a functional European health data ecosystem, focusing on data governance and interoperability. Verena’s most recent professional stations in Brussels include the health practice at APCO Worldwide and the European Society of Radiology. Her career started in Austria as healthcare professional where she gained her first experiences as radiologic technologist, working in direct contact with patients. Later, she worked for the IT department of the same hospital group as specialist for clinical IT applications, coordinating implementation projects before she went to Maastricht to earn a master’s degree in Healthcare Policy, Innovation & Management. In 2020/21 Verena participated in the European Health Parliament where she chaired the committee on European Health Data Co-Operation.

Vlad Bakaliar

Head of mental health project Tysha by OneUkraine

Yuliia Karnas

Managing director, OneUkraine