CHT2025 SPEAKERS
CONFERENCE CHAIRS
PROF PAUL DIMITRI
CHT Conference Founder; Professor of Child Health and Director of Innovation, Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust; Clinical Director, NIHR HRC in Paediatrics and Child Health
PROF MEENA BALASUBRAMANIAN
Professor of Medical Genetics and Genomic Medicine, University of Sheffield; Clinical Director for Research, Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust; Executive Director, SCYPHeR (Sheffield Children and Young People Health Research) Initiative
MR DAUDA BAPPA
Research Theme Manager, Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre
CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
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Elizabeth is an Assistant Professor (tenure track) at Montana State University- Mark & Robyn Jones College of Nursing in Bozeman, Montana. She teaches Design of Healthcare Delivery Systems, an interprofessional graduate course offering with College of Nursing (Clinical Nurse Leader and DNP students) and College of Engineering students (industrial, mechanical, healthcare systems engineering students) to evaluate quality and efficiency in the delivery of patient care. Her research includes technology innovation and digital health device development for clinical trial participant safety management, with funding awarded from the Montana State University/U.S. Economic Development Administration, American Nurses Association, NIH, Genentech Innovation Fund, and via the National Science Foundation- National Innovation Corps program. She is part of the Blueprint Engine- Tough Tech Program at MIT. Her service includes Chair for the Research Committee of the International Association of Clinical Research Nurses, President-Elect for the Nursing Institute of Healthcare Design, Coalition for Health AI Health System Advisory Board, and member of the American Nurses Association Innovation Advisory Committee for Technology + Medical Devices. Prior to her current role at Montana State University, Elizabeth was a clinical research nurse, clinical trial manager, and pharmaceutical industry global early clinical development manager supporting pediatric endocrinology and adult oncology.
DR ELIZABETH JOHNSON
Assistant Professor, Montana State University; Co-Director, Biomedical Innovation for Research and Development (Biored) Hub
“Together, Research is Everyone’s Knowledge: Adaptation of the UK YPAG Model for U.S. Rural, Frontier, and Indigenous Communities”
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Paul trained in medicine and then psychiatry before taking a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. He is the Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and a Wellcome Trust Investigator as well as an honorary consultant psychiatrist with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.
He is interested in neural processes underlying perception and belief how these may be altered in psychosis. He is excited about the potential impact of games on cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry and has worked closely with the Cambridge video game studio, Ninja Theory Ltd, in the development of Hellblade. Senua’s Sacrifice and the follow-up game. Senua’s Saga. He continues to collaborate with them in exploring a scientific basis for using games to enhance mental health.
PROF PAUL FLETCHER
Consultant Psychiatrist and Professor of Health Neuroscience, University of Cambridge
“The power of video games in representing mental illness”
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Sarah is an experienced research scientist and has been the Business Manager at CHEATA, a part of NUH NHS Trust since 2016. CHEATA supports med-tech developers to gather evidence for NHS. She is responsible for the day-to-day running of CHEATA in addition to selected project delivery including value propositions, literature searches and clinical evaluation reports. Sarah has a PhD in Biochemistry and carried out post-doctoral research at Oxford and Leicester Universities before spending over 10 years at AstraZeneca as an Experimental Pathologist in the Respiratory and Inflammation Therapy area. Prior to CHEATA, Sarah was responsible for Healthcare and Medical Devices at Pera Technology.
DR SARAH BOLTON
Business Manager, Centre for Healthcare Equipment and Technology Adoption (CHEATA), Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
“What does the NHS want from medical device manufacturers?”
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Dr Janet Bouttell is a health economist who has worked extensively with developers of health technologies at the early stages of development. A qualified chartered accountant, Janet moved into academia in 2015. She completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow followed by an Innovate UK funded post doc with a developer of molecular diagnostic technologies. Her work focused on methods of health technology assessment to facilitate the development of medical devices which are likely to make a clinical difference for patients and clinicians and offer value for money for the health service provider. In June 2023, Janet started work at the Centre for Healthcare Equipment and Technology Adoption (CHEATA) based in the Clinical Engineering Department of Nottingham University Hospitals acute NHS trust. CHEATA work within the East Midlands innovation infrastructure to support innovators throughout the development of health technologies. CHEATA undertake clinical pathway analysis, develop value propositions and perform early health economic analysis. Janet is co-chair of an HTAi working group on the terminology of early HTA, a member of the evidence review panel for the Scottish Health Technologies Group and sits on the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit grant committee for the East Midlands.
DR JANET BOUTTELL
Health Economist, Centre for Healthcare Equipment and Technology Adoption (CHEATA), Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
“How early Health Technology Assessment can derisk your technology development project”
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From the very start of his career, Saran Muthiah has been driven by a deep passion for helping children with neurodisabilities reach their fullest potential. Over the years, Saran worked tirelessly to specialise—and eventually super-specialize—in paediatric neurodisability, becoming one of the few specialist paediatric physiotherapists to develop and lead a bespoke movement disorder service for children in the NHS, UK. He is working at the intersection of clinical care and digital innovation to transform NHS care services.
As the founder of EnrichMyCare, an AI-powered digital platform supporting neurodisability and neurodevelopmental care, he is driving new approaches to care coordination, intelligent triaging, and patient engagement. Recognised by NHS England’s Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, Saran is striving to develop technology that makes a real-world impact.
He holds an Executive MBA with distinction from Warwick Business School and a Master’s in Computer Science, with part of his MBA completed at Chicago Booth School of Business. With a strong mix of clinical, technical, and leadership experience, he is working to shape the future of paediatric digital healthcare.
MR SARAN MUTHIAH
NHS Clinical Entrepreneur and Specialist Paediatric Physiotherapist; CEO and Founder, Enrich My Care
“From Innovation to Impact: How EnrichMyCare is Reshaping Paediatric Care”
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Meritxell Teixidó holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona (UB) and an eMBA in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and International Business from UOC. At a scientific level, her field is the synthesis of peptides and the discovery of peptides capable of crossing biological barriers and she was responsible for this research line at the IRB Barcelona during more than 15 years, where she co-directed 10 doctoral theses, published more than 50 articles and participated in 9 patents.
After dedicating more than 15 years to biomedical research at IRB Barcelona, trying to improve the arrival of drugs to the brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier that protects it. She decided to jump more barriers and be the CEO/CSO of Gate2Brain SL. in order to bring technology closer to patients, a challenge and an honor. Jumping barriers is perhaps the common thread that describes her, combining science and innovation with a new vision on leadership, for which she received the spanish Woman Startup Award 2022 – Inspiration.
DR MERITXELL TEIXIDO
CEO and Co-Founder, Gate2Brain
“BBB shuttles to efficiently transport drugs to the brain”
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I am a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Paediatric Infectious Diseases, and an honorary consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. I work between the UK and Harare, Zimbabwe on a portfolio of studies aimed at improving diagnosis, management and prevention of neonatal sepsis in low-resource settings. I’m on particularly interested in how we can improve infection prevention and control (IPC) and limit the spread of anti-microbial resistance, despite the challenges of working with few and intermittent resources.
Within my Fellowship, I aim to develop an AI-enabled clinical decision support tool to safely reduce antibiotic use in newborns in low-resource settings. Alongside the tool development, we are working with clinicians to explore how their context impacts on antibiotic decision-making, and with families to understand how we can better involve them in antibiotic decision-making for their babies. I work with a multidisciplinary international team based between University College London led by Prof Michelle Heys, Zimbabwe and Malawi which has co-developed Neotree, a digital quality improvement tool aiming to support clinicians in low-resource settings care for vulnerable neonates while capturing data. Since 2018 we have captured data on >37,000 neonates and trained >500 clinicians in Malawi and Zimbabwe. We have set up a charity to support wider implementation of Neotree beyond the research setting, and have received funding from the Wellcome Trust, UNICEF, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
DR FELICITY FITZGERALD
Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Imperial College London
“Rethinking Neonatal Sepsis in Southern Africa”
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Fiona Sotir is a senior registrar in Paediatric Dentistry at Charles Clifford Dental Hospital. She completed her NIHR funded PhD study ‘No Need(le) To Worry’ in 2024, co-designing a web based resource for needle fear with young people, parents and healthcare professionals. Her research interests focus on managing procedural anxiety in children and young people.
DR FIONA SOTIR
Specialist Registrar in Paediatric Dentistry, Charles Clifford Dental Hospital
“Children’s oral health and technology – are we falling behind the times?”
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Tamsin is a paediatrician in Cambridge and founder of Hear Glue Ear (www.hearglueear.co.uk). She put together a hearing device and app for children with the most common type of hearing loss, which won many paediatric, audiology and innovation awards. It also led her to work in low income countries to support childhood hearing loss, and involvement with WHO World Hearing Forum. This led her to become involved in digital health education and innovation in NHS, becoming clinical lead for the NHS clinical entrepreneur programme (www.nhscep.com).
DR TAMSIN HOLLAND BROWN
Paediatrician, Brookfields Hospital, Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust
“Baby Steps to Big Breakthroughs: Nurturing Bright Ideas in Paediatrics”
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With a steadfast commitment to leveraging technology for healthcare, Dr Visram’s research at Great Ormond Street Hospital’s DRIVE innovation hub has been a journey of blending advancements in science and technology with clinical expertise to explore and evaluate new human-machine interactions. The team has pioneered the use of a collaborative learning strategy to create a future where technology empathetically meets the needs of healthcare professionals and young patients.
Dr Visram has made extensive contributions to the field of healthcare leadership and entrepreneurship as a TEDx curator and organiser, journal editor at the Royal College of Physicians and mentor on the KQ Labs Accelerator at the Francis Crick Institute. She holds a special interest in international knowledge exchange. As a co-founder of the Industry Exchange Network for Good, she has cultivated leadership in tech philanthropy, facilitating partnerships with industry and global NGOs to drive social impact through technology.
DR SHEENA VISRAM
Chair Of IXN For Good, University College London
“Human-centred healthcare innovation”
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Dr Rachael Grimaldi is a senior anaesthetic registrar at Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Co-Founder and CEO of CardMedic, Fellow on the NHS Innovation Accelerator and NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, and until recently, was the Associate Medical Director of the Brighton Marathon for 7 years. Rachael has a long-held interest in human factors, patient safety and communication; winning several prizes for previous work on developing a Safer Intensive Care Unit Handover, before going on to win multiple prizes for her social impact start-up, CardMedic.
CardMedic is a growing and disruptive UK/US-based innovative digital health company focused on value-based care, by reducing health inequities due to communication barriers. Designed in rapid response to the global communication crisis in healthcare at the start of the pandemic, CardMedic has quickly evolved into a flexible tool to overcome any communication barrier in healthcare – language, visual, hearing or cognitive impairment, or poor health literacy. CardMedic is supporting NHS Trusts meet legislative requirements in accessible communication by providing content in multiple languages, sign language videos, easy read, read-aloud, digital consent integration and live interpreters.
DR RACHAEL GRIMALDI
Co-Founder And CEO, Cardmedic / NHS Anaesthetist
“Disaster Innovation and My Accidental Journey to Clinical Entrepreneurship of Leveraging Digital Technology to Overcome Communication Barriers in Healthcare”
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Professor Amaka C Offiah is Chair in Paediatric Musculoskeletal Imaging and Consultant Paediatric Radiologist at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, with specialist interest in suspected inflicted injury in children and skeletal dysplasias. She has published over 175 peer reviewed publications, book chapters and books and given over 300 invited national and international lectures. Professor Offiah’s main research interest lies in the imaging of suspected child abuse and skeletal dysplasias and in methods of determining which children have fragile bones prone to fracture and which do not, including optimising current and development of novel methods of distinguishing brittle from normal bones, understanding the mechanisms of injury in infants and young children and improving the detection and dating of the subtle fractures seen in abuse. Other areas of research relate to developing artificial intelligence tools for the detection of accidental, inflicted and vertebral fractures.
Professor Offiah is the first female Managing Editor of the journal “Pediatric Radiology”, Convener of the Skeletal Dysplasia Group for Teaching and Research, Chairperson of the European Society of Pediatric Radiology Child Abuse Taskforce and Chair of the International Guidelines for Imaging in Suspected Physical Abuse (IGISPA) consensus group.
PROFESSOR AMAKA OFFIAH
Professor Of Paediatric Musculoskeletal Imaging/honorary Consultant Paediatric Radiologist, University of Sheffield
Shared session: “Using digital twins to assess bone strength in children“
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Dr Li is now a senior lecturer in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, and also a member of the INSGINEO Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her main research interest is in continuum finite element modelling of the musculoskeletal system, focusing on two applications: (1) juvenile bone mechanics and (2) pregnancy complications. She has extensive experience in creating digital twin models of children’s bones based on medical images. These models are used in a wide range of applications from investigating juvenile bone mechanics, to predicting injury mechanisms for both normal skeleton and those with pathology. Her work on pregnancy complications involved the use of digital twin models to investigate cervical mechanics in those mothers at risk of pre-term birth, and the texture analysis of placenta to differentiate placenta pathology in MRI scans assisted by AI.
DR LI XINSHAN (SHANNON)
Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield
Shared session: “Using digital twins to assess bone strength in children“
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Seray is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London, within the Department of Informatics. She brings interdisciplinary training from Speech and Language Therapy, Human Computer Interaction and Multimodal Discourse to research how the design and use of digital technology shapes social interaction.
She has held UKRI ESRC personal funding at doctoral and postdoctoral levels to pursue research about social interaction and technology design for children with disabilities. Through her work, she has made contributions to designing digital supports for in-person social interaction that involves children and augmentative and alternative communication devices, and separately, parent-child interventions that can promote positive mental health.
DR SERAY IBRAHIM
Research Associate, King’s College London
“Designing Digital Tools for Parenting & In-the-Moment Support”