Festival of Digital Health - Leadership Summit

Join the Conversation Shaping the Future of Health and Social Care

The UK government has set out bold ambitions for transforming health and social care through digital innovation. Now more than ever, strong leadership is essential to turn vision into reality.

If you’re a leader based in South West England and Wales we’d like to invite you to join us for our Digital Health Leadership Summit—a pivotal gathering of regional leaders, innovators, and policymakers.

Event schedule

16:00 – 16:15 – Arrival and refreshments

16:15 – 16:25 – Introduction from Professor Ian Craddock

16:25 – 17:10 – Short keynote talks from invited speakers

17:10 – 18:00 – Panel discussion with speakers

18:00 – 19:00 – Networking with canapes and refreshments

About the Summit

This will be an opportunity to:

• Tackle pressing challenges in digital transformation across the NHS and social care.
• Explore cutting-edge opportunities to harness data, AI, and digital tools for better outcomes. 
• Network with peers to shape strategies that align with national priorities and local needs.
• Influence the future of digital health policy and implementation.

Your insights and leadership are vital to ensuring digital technology delivers on its promise to improve care, empower patients, and support the workforce.

About the speakers

Paul Hepden (NHS England South West)

Paul's background includes 15 years in senior management roles spanning all health sectors and social care; his primary focus over the past five years has been the development and adoption of digitally enabled, ‘place-based’ models of care, including Virtual Wards and Modern General Practice.

Since joining NHS England in 2019, Paul has managed the strategic investment of digital health, IT & diagnostic funding into the South West, playing a key role in facilitating the networks and communities of practice set up to support the delivery of national digital health change programmes.

Paul’s experience of working with numerous digital health pilot projects has led to him becoming a regular contributor to the development of national NHS digital health and IT infrastructure policy and guidance, including the development of the new 10-year plan for the NHS.

Lucy Fraser (Albyn Housing Society)

Lucy is Head of Innovation at Albyn Housing Society Ltd, and has over 25 years experience within the social housing sector. For the past 5 years she has been leading the technology side of a multi-agency City Region Deal and KTP innovation project in partnership with multiple public sector agencies and GP’s to develop a technology enabled homes test bed within the social housing sector.

The aim is to create homes where ambient technology supports individuals to live independently as long as it is safe from them to do so, while enabling support and intervention from family, friends, carers and health professionals at appropriate times based on data driven alerts and algorithms. The data captured is significant and a recent successful bid is enabling the test bed to grow and the number of research and develop partners to similarly increase. The project is being run through a social business model with the aim of it being financially self-sustaining.

Liam Cahill (Together Digital)

Liam is a healthcare strategist, advisor and the founder of Together Digital. Liam previously co-founded an impactful, nationally respected social enterprise supporting the NHS to improve care around medicines and prescribing. Over the years, he has advised a range of national bodies, local systems, arm's-length bodies, frontline providers and healthtech companies.

Liam supports health and social care organisations navigate the wider impact of digital and conditions needed for innovation, and advises a number of healthtech companies around navigating the NHS.

Professor Maneesh Kumar (Cardiff University)

Maneesh is Professor in Service Operations at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University.

He conducts interdisciplinary research in Operational Excellence, Industry 4.0/5.0, Business model innovation, and circular economy. With over 180 publications, he explores topics like Healthcare Process Innovation and Industry 4.0/5.0 integration.

He has received more than £6 million research funding from EPSRC, ESRC, Welsh Government, Innovate UK, and Highway England. Recognized with the ‘Business Innovation’ Award at Cardiff University, he received the ‘Distinguished Professor Award’ from the IEOM Society.

He is regularly invited as a keynote speaker at international events and provides Lean Six Sigma training, impacting industries worldwide including Admiral and NHS. Acknowledged for teaching excellence, he contributes significantly to academia and industry alike.

LEAP Research Showcase

Preceding the Leadership Summit, we are holding a Research Showcase from 13:30 - 16:00. This will be an opportunity to hear from the teams working on LEAP Hub funded collaborative research projects and fellowships. 

All of our collaborative research project teams and Solo and Twin Fellows will be presenting posters during the afternoon, with extended talks from the following projects::

• FAL-VITAE Falls and Activity Lexicon: using Video and IMU Technology for remote Assessment and Evaluation
• Improving the usability, accessibility, and inclusivity of digital dyadic cardiac rehabilitation for people living with heart failure
• Predicting patient readmission risk to support early discharge decisions
• PRIDE: Planning & Resource Integration in Digital Environments – The Case of Frail, Elderly Patients, and Palliative Care
• PRISM: Prioritising Allocation of Scarce Perinatal Pathology Resource with ML-Assisted Placenta Pathology Screening
• Working towards data-driven care: Exploring new methods and new technologies to optimise secondary care clinical dashboards presenting patient-generated health data and predictive analytics

If you would like to attend this as well, please add a ticket for this during the booking process.

Booking a place

• This is an in-person event
• Please book a ticket for each part of the event that you will be attending

Festival of Digital Health

The Festival of Digital Health runs from Monday 30 June - Friday 4 July 2025. Taking place across the South West of England and Wales, it will be a dynamic week of events, showcasing how digital technologies are transforming the way we think about, deliver, and experience health and care.

Whether you’re a digital health professional, a healthcare provider, a researcher, a tech enthusiast, or simply curious about how technology is shaping the future of care — this festival is for you.

In-person events will take place in Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. For the full programme please visit: Festival of Digital Health programme