Professor Graham Lord MA, MB BChir, FSB, FRCP, PhD is Professor of Medicine and Honorary Consultant in Nephrology, Transplantation and Internal Medicine, and Director of NIHR Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre, Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital and King's College London.

He qualified in medicine from Cambridge University in 1991 before specialising in nephrology, transplantation and general medicine as a registrar at the Hammersmith. He undertook a period of research in transplantation immunology at Imperial College London that lead to a PhD in 2000 and undertook a period of immunological research at Harvard University before returning to the UK to become the Chair of Medicine at Guy's and St Thomas' in 2006. Graham has built up a research group at King's College London investigating T cell and dendritic cell biology and the genetics of renal disease. In addition, he practices clinical nephrology with a workload that focuses mainly on renal transplantation.


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George Freeman was elected to parliament in 2010 after a 15 year career in biomedical venture capital. Formerly Director of Early Stage Ventures at Merlin Biosciences, CEO of Cambridge start-up Amedis Pharmaceuticals, and Founder and Chairman of specialist translational medicine consultancy 4D Biomedical Ltd, George has spent most of his career in and around the Cambridge cluster supporting high-tech growth businesses. In recent years he has developed a growing interest in the potential of UK agricultural and plant science, and served as adviser to the Norwich Research Park and Elsoms Seeds. He has spoken and written widely on the potential of UK science, technology and entrepreneurship to lead a sustainable economic recovery. He is the PPS to the Climate Change Minister and in July 2011 was appointed Adviser on Life Sciences to the Minister of State for Universities and Science, the Rt Hon David Willetts MP.

Presentation: Planning for growth

Healthcare and life sciences are central to the government's Plan for Growth, and actions to support the strong relationship between the NHS and industry and their potential to stimulate economic growth have been set out in the recent Life Sciences Strategy. Close collaboration across sectors is essential in ensuring success.

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George is a Senior Civil Servant and is currently Deputy Director, Innovation Policy at the Department of Health. Prior to this, George was on secondment as Director of Research & Policy for the Social Enterprise Coalition (now Social Enterprise UK).

Previously George worked in the NHS for over 20 years. The majority of that time was spent working in Public Health in Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham. From 2001-2006 George was Director of Public Health & Health Improvement for Tower Hamlets, based in the Primary Care Trust. George joined the Department of Health, in March 2006 as the Head of Public Health Development. George is a Health Economist by background, is a member of the UK Public Health Register and is an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health.

Presentation: A strategic approach to innovation in the reformed NHS

Whilst the NHS is recognised as a world leader at invention, it is less successful at spreading them at pace and scale. How can innovation be properly incentivised? The NHS Chief Executive review set out to establish what behaviours and cultures stand in the way of innovation, and how they can be tackled effectively.

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Robert Lechler qualified in Medicine in Manchester in 1975. Thereafter, he undertook four years of junior hospital doctor training in general medicine and nephrology before embarking on a PhD in transplantation immunology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School. Following the PhD, Robert returned to full-time clinical work for two years and completed his scientific training at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA. He returned to the UK to a senior lecturer post at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in 1986 and became Head of the Department of Immunology in 1994. He became Dean of Hammersmith Campus at Imperial College Faculty of Medicine in 2001 and Head of the Division of Medicine in 2003. Robert moved to King's College London as Head of the School of Medicine at Guy's, King's College and St Thomas' Hospitals in September 2004 and was appointed Vice Principal (Health) at King's College in October 2005. In June 2009, he was appointed as Executive Director of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre.

Robert continues to direct a research group in transplantation immunology and his research group has three major interests:
• Defining and exploiting the mechanisms of transplantation tolerance
• Regulating coagulation as a mechanism to inhibit inflammatory and adaptive immune responses
• Defining the 'fingerprint' of clinical transplantation tolerance

Presentation: Collaboration for success

Translating research into healthcare improvements and enhancing economic prosperity are key priorities for the UK. Supporting collaborative research between academia, industry and the NHS – which can create unique opportunities for research, offering linked information on treatment and outcomes on a large scale – is vitally important.

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Research Data Management:
Researching and implementing research data management and working to connect researchers to best practice & expertise in institutional services (IT/Library/legal/finance) & across University research disciplines including national initiatives through the JISC Managing Research Data Programme (#JISCMRD Halogen project), HEFCE/JISC University Modernisation Fund (#UMFcloud BRISSkit project) UK Research Data Service (UKRDS).

Also international e-research including EU e-iRG e-infrastructure reflection group & IVOA astronomical data sharing (co-editor of IVOA newsletter). Researching and enabling interdisciplinary research projects in e.g. genetics, arts & humanities (Wellcome/JISC Halogen; Leverhulme Trust Diasporas projects); engineering (EU FP7 Mintweld); bioinformatics (Leicester Hospital & University Trust Biomedical Research Unit) & research data security planning.

Project Lead:
JISC funded Biomedical Research Infrastructure Software Service (BRISSkit), July 2011 - June 2012
http://brisskit.le.ac.uk
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/umf.aspx

Astronomical Research:
Research Fellow in X-ray & Observational Astronomy Group, Dept of Physics & Astronomy. Research interests include multi wavelength astronomical surveys, XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre, e-research including International Virtual Observatory (IVOA), & interstellar dynamics in star formation


Presentation: Bridging biomedical research & healthcare with BRISSkit: Biomedical research data in the cloud?

BRISSkit aims to bridge the divide between biomedical research and healthcare by providing secure, reliable and affordable open source database hosting solutions in-house or as a national cloud based service over the UK JANET academic network or NHS N3 cloud when available. The solutions will support the management and integration of tissue samples with clinical data and electronic patient records, having appropriate information governance and anonymisation where required.

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Professor Sir John Tooke is Vice Provost (Health) and Head of the Medical School at UCL and Academic Director of UCL's Academic Health Science Centre, UCL Partners. Sir John is President of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the immediate past Chair of both the Medical Schools Council and the UK Healthcare Education Advisory Committee (UKHEAC). He is a member of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Advisory Board and the Health and Education National Strategic Exchange (HENSE). His clinical and research interests focus on diabetes and its vascular complications and he is a recipient of the European Association of Diabetes Camillo Golgi Award. He is former Chair of Diabetes UK Professional Section and former President of the European Society for Microcirculation. The University of Exeter was awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for his work on the pathogenesis of diabetic microangiopathy. In addition to more fundamental work on the complications of diabetes, his research has embraced screening and service delivery and organisational issues and the patient's perspective. In 2007 Sir John led the Inquiry for the Secretary of State for Health into Postgraduate Medical Educating and Training, culminating in the final report, Aspiring to Excellence. In the same year he led a high-level group for the CMO on Barriers to Clinical Effectiveness, the report of which led to the creation of CLAHRCs (Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care).

Presentation: Simplifying health research regulation

Health research regulation has grown increasingly complex, stifling research and driving some medical science overseas. Following a report by the Academy of Medical Sciences, a new health research regulatory agency is to be set up to streamline regulation and improve the cost-effectiveness of clinical trials.

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Alasdair Gaw obtained his PhD as a pharmacologist in 1989 and spent two years as an NIH postdoctoral Fellowship in Vermont USA before returning to the UK where he worked for Glaxo and later AstraZeneca. Alasdair has over 20 year's experience in the pharmaceutical industry covering science, line and project management, delivering several projects to positive clinical studies. He spent the last four years as the Director of Translational Medicine in Respiratory and Inflammation where he worked with several precompetitive international activities between academia and pharma, such as COPD-Gene, UBIOPRED, COPD Biomarker Qualification Consortium and COPD MAP consortium, to improve patient phenotyping and disease characterisation. As this is critical to the success of drug trials and industry, Alasdair moved to the Technology Strategy Board in 2011 as Lead Specialist in Stratified Medicine. The objective of his current role is to work with other partners in the UK healthcare environment such as DoH, SGDH, NICE, MRC, CRUK and ARUK to enable the successful development, implementation and use of stratified medicine within the UK that will provide business opportunities and accelerate commercialisation of new products from the UK life sciences industry.

Presentation: Making the UK the best place to develop and adopt Stratified Medicine

Stratified Medicine is recognised as the future of healthcare treatment worldwide. The UK Stratified Medicine Innovation Platform is a consortium of government bodies and leading charities from the Department of Health, Scottish Government Health Directorate, NICE, MRC, Cancer Research UK and Arthritis Research UK with the Technology Strategy Board to increase the impact of R&D investment and make the UK a leader in the development and implementation of Stratified Medicine. Technology Strategy Board is committed to identifying and investing in Stratified Medicine opportunities that will supporting the growth and further development of the UK healthcare industry.

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Richard is the Director of Implementation and Interim Managing Director for NHS Global, a new UK body established to support the delivery of health care expertise to the international market. Richard is also Programme Director for the NHS Innovation Challenge Prizes at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, a role that involves improving the culture of innovation in NHS organisations.

Prior to joining the NHS Institute in April 2010 Richard was Associate Director of Corporate Strategy at Derbyshire County PCT with the lead responsibility for delivering the World Class Commissioning agenda. He was also a participant on the first cohort of the Top Talent Breaking Through Programme.

Richard represents emerging NHS leaders as a core member of the NHS National Leadership Council and is also a member of the NHS Health and Well-being Scrutiny Panel.

Richard joined the NHS in 2002 through the national Graduate Management Scheme and has previously worked in numerous sectors, including the acute sector as Head of Business Development at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Prior to joining the NHS Richard worked in the media, predominantly in TV and radio production at the BBC and Granada TV. Richard lives in Sheffield.

Presentation: Going global – promoting UK healthcare innovation

The government's 'Plan for Growth' recognises the reputation of the NHS and the UK life sciences sector internationally as a great asset, and sets out the intention to establish a 'proactive, entrepreneurial' NHS Global to make the most of the brand overseas and to offer support and advice to NHS Trusts.

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