We are thrilled to introduce our successful cohort of Future Digital Leaders, who have earned their place in this year's cohort. These individuals represent the future of health and care informatics, showcasing dedication and potential in their fields.
Meet Our Leaders
Monica Francine Freeman
(/ˈmɒnɪkə frænˈsiːn ˈfriːmən/)
Monica Francine Freeman is a seasoned professional in Healthcare Informatics, renowned for her journey spanning the Asia-Pacific region to the United Kingdom. Her career began by integrating healthcare practices with state-of-the-art technology, gaining insights that have shaped her current role. Based in the United Kingdom, Monica contributes her expertise to Cleveland Clinic London, part of a leading US healthcare organisation.
Monica's perspective is enriched by combining best practices and innovations from diverse global regions. As Cleveland Clinic London’s Data and Health Informatics Lead, Monica embodies a T-shaped professional. Her blend of nursing expertise, information technology, analytics, and leadership sets her apart. She drives healthcare innovation by seamlessly connecting patient care with digital solutions, driven by her passion for safety, quality, high reliability, healthcare informatics, and data science. Monica’s impact extends beyond her immediate roles. She started her career with a Software as a Service (SaaS) Radiology telehealth company in the Philippines, serving diverse continents and ensuring compliance with data governance regulations. At the NHS in the UK, Monica led the frontline implementation of an EPR, influencing and engaging clinicians to adopt new technology in one of the major trusts in the north. As a former Patient Safety Lead, she oversaw and built the quality management system as they transitioned to PSIRF to meet national safety needs for a paperless digital hospital.
Committed to fostering positive change in healthcare, Monica is a National Digital Shared Decision Council Member, advocating for informed decision-making to enhance healthcare outcomes. She remains at the forefront of industry advancements, ensuring healthcare informatics and data science drive meaningful change. Monica also dedicates herself to mentoring the next generation of healthcare IT professionals, shaping the future of healthcare technology with her interdisciplinary knowledge and dedication to excellence.
Looking ahead, Monica aspires to advance into senior leadership roles where she can continue to influence healthcare strategy and innovation on a broader scale, combining her clinical insights with cutting-edge technological solutions to drive transformative change across healthcare systems. Her goal is to lead initiatives that improve patient outcomes, enhance operational efficiency, and elevate standards of care through integrated healthcare informatics and data-driven decision-making.
Fiona Mills
Currently working as Deputy CNIO at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Fiona is a Paediatric Nurse with over 15 years of clinical experience. Fiona began her Digital Nursing career in 2013 by clinically supporting the electronic medications administration and prescribing rollout in the Childrens Hospital in Oxford. In 2017 she proudly became one of the first Nursing Informatics leads at Oxford University Hospitals.
After moving into digital, Fiona’s interest and passion was clear and this role changed to include full divisional digital support within the Trust, managing all aspects of digital Nursing for a wide variety of specialities across paediatric and adult services. Fiona successfully became a Deputy CNIO, taking a lead in all aspects of digital Nursing across multiple specialities and developing and managing a team of digital nurses.
Fiona is passionate about Digital Nursing, actively leading the development of digital skills for Nurses within the clinical healthcare setting through support, training and education for clinical staff and Nursing students. Future aims include development to a CNIO role, continuing to champion digital Nursing as a specialist Nursing role and further development of digital skills for Nursing colleagues at all stages of their careers.
Shevon Licorish
Shevon currently serves as a Data Architect with NHSBSA and is the Branch Lead for AphA NENC. He has been instrumental in expanding the NE AphA branch into the NENC region to better represent and support Health and Care Informatics in his area. His dedication to fostering collaboration, reducing duplication in efforts, and standardising approaches across data and analytics reflects his commitment to improving the NHS. An ardent supporter of AphA, FEDIP, NCF and SDNs, Shevon is deeply involved in the professionalisation of the field. He believes in the power of networking and the community approach to Health and Care Informatics. His personal journey, marked by his experiences as an ethnic minority, fuels his passion to create accessible career guidance, mentorship, and professional development opportunities for all. Aspiring to become a Chief Analytics Officer, Shevon sees his current role and leadership within AphA as platforms to drive innovation and collaboration in the NHS. He aims to inspire and support upcoming and current professionals, ensuring they have the guidance and resources needed to succeed. Recently, Shevon was selected for the Future Digital Leader Bursary Programme, a testament to his dedication and potential as a future leader in digital health. He is committed to making a positive impact on healthcare outcomes and fostering a welcoming, inclusive environment. "Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." – Theodore Roosevelt
Bekah Evans
Bekah began her career in the private sector, leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver best-practice digital products and services across charity, higher education and public sectors. She’s a champion of user-centred design, Agile delivery and open-source technology. She ensures digital products and services meet common technology standards and aligns with professional standards.
She is currently working in a leadership position at SABP, an NHS mental health Trust, leading digital design teams to deliver improvements to the Trust’s electronic patient record (EPR) system, SystmOne. Through direct engagement of service staff, she delivers EPR changes that improve efficiency, support clinical decision-making, and reduce risk around clinical safety and patient data alongside improving reporting capability, sharing of relevant data and overall staff experience. In September Bekah will take up a position with NHS England as Product Manager for test results within the NHS App.
As an aspiring digital leader in the NHS, Bekah promotes collaboration, working in the open and delivering to meet user needs. She believes in a future where open data architecture and interoperability are a given so that the right insight sits in the hands of health leaders, policymakers and commissioners.
Kumbi Kariwo
Kumbi Kariwo is a registered Learning Disability Nurse and has worked in the NHS for 22 years.
In this time, she has taken up several roles within community settings as her passion has been to improve patient/service user experience when accessing health care through education with a focus on early prevention.
In 2016 she set up the Young People's Sexual Health Service. This Service was nominated for the NHS Parliamentary Awards by Jess Phillips (MP) and commended by CQC as one of the services making a difference in addressing inequalities in Birmingham.
Inequalities have always been present in our communities however Covid-19 has further highlighted the disparity to equal access in relation to health and social need.
In 2021, Kumbi was successfully appointed as the first Chief of Nursing Fellow at Birmingham Community Health Care Trust where she spent 18 months developing her clinical excellence and research capacity within Digital Health and Health Inequalities.
Her continued aim as a Health Inequalities Lead, is to utilise her knowledge, experience and skill set in addressing patient inequalities and access to services.
Memberships
Chair – Midlands Digital Shared Decision-Making Council
National Digital Shared Decision Making Council – Midlands Representative
Shuri Network Member
Awards
Trojan Mouse (Steady and incremental approach to transformation) Award at the Healthcare Excellence Through Technology
Publications
Kariwo.K., Chapman.M., Oozageer Gunowa,N., (2023) Wounds International: How does skin tones affect staff confidence when dealing with pressure ulcers, Vol 14 Issue 2 www.woundsinternational.com
Dhoonmoon, L., Fletcher, J., Atkin, L., Bagdadi,N., Enoc, M., Kariwo,K., Marshall, A., Neesha Oozageer Gunowa,N., Pankhurst,S., Sidambe,V., Spencer.,S., (2021) Wounds UK: Best Practice Statement Addressing skin tone bias in wound care: assessing signs and symptoms in people with dark skin tones. https://www.wounds-uk.com/resources/details/addressing-skin-tone-bias-wound-care-assessing-signs-and-symptoms-people-dark-skin-tones
Clair Watts
For the past three years, Clair has been a Project Manager at Digital Health and Care Wales, the digital provider of IT systems across all of Wales’ NHS.
Prior to this, she worked for fifteen years in post-doctoral biosciences research & science policy and eleven years as Executive Director for three European Third Sector healthcare organisations. The common thread has always been the opportunity to work at the forefront of change, at the interface of new and evolving disciplines.
Even with a varied career in healthcare spanning many discipline areas, it wasn’t until she recently began her digital journey that she truly understood the extraordinary contribution that digital technologies do, and will, make to modern healthcare. She has found her recent move to digital to be an incredibly valuable experience as well as a huge learning curve!
Her goal in accepting the FEDIP Future Leaders’ Bursary is to gain the contacts, knowledge and skills needed to build on her previous expertise and take on more challenging digital roles for the benefit of Wales’ clinicians and patients.
Jessica McCluney
Jess is a Senior Data Scientist at Digital Health and Care Northern Ireland (DHCNI). Since May 2023, she has been dedicated to providing data and analytical support to the Data and Health Intelligence workstream of the Integrated Care System (ICS) NI. In this role, Jess has led data sourcing exercises and feasibility assessments, which have enabled the development of a dashboard that integrates data from multiple sources across Health and Social Care (HSC) using cloud-based technologies. Day-to-day, Jess collaborates with experts across the HSC, leveraging her technical skills in Microsoft Azure, SQL, and PowerBI, with their specialist knowledge to communicate data insights clearly using interactive data visualisations for ICS stakeholders.
In her role, Jess hopes to build the foundations of a data pool for ICS that can be harnessed for evidence-based decision-making and driving the HSC towards a proactive, data-led approach to improve health outcomes for Northern Ireland.
Cath Rodgers
I have just transitioned due to internal restructuring into the Digital Division working directly to the Associate Director of Digital. I have taken responsibility for the following teams:
Acute Health Records
Digital Health Records
E-Correspondence system Team
Data Quality Manager
Data Investigation Team
Patient Portal Enquiries
Contract Management
At ESHT we are currently in the procurement phase for a full EPR so very focused on current processes and reporting functions to improve data quality, benefits realisation, engagement and streamline functions.
Being accepted onto the FEDIP cohort will support best practices, review lessons learnt and hopefully synergy across NHS Data quality!
Profiles to Follow For . . .
Antonio Ruiz
Project Manager, Health Innovation Network South London
Agnes Kozlowska
Knowledge and Information Manager, Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
Abdul-Kareem Abdul-Rahman
Epidemiology and Information Analyst, UKHSA
Antonia Hannam
Digital Services Trainer, Bradford District Care Trust
Emily Byfield
Performance Analysis Manager, Ministry of Defence - Headquarters Defence Medical Services
Hemal Maharaja
Senior IT Technician, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
Hugo Herrera
Head of Analytics, East Suffolk North East Essex NHS Foundation Trust
Jonny Marcus
Telecommunication Manager, Northern Ireland Ambulance Service
Nicole Seneque
Barchester Health, Head of IT Business Analysis & Innovation
Oluyemisi Ibiteye
GPST3, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust
Padma Jonnalagadda
Business Intelligence Analyst, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Regina French
Clinical Education Business Manager, Sussex Community Foundation NHS Trust
Salu Sreedev
Digital Safety and Transformation Nurse Clinical Educator, Clinical Safety Officer, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust
Tom Russell
Head of Cybersecurity, Engagement and Compliance, NHS England
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