Matthew Swindells

Biography

Matthew was elected Chair of the health section of the British Computer Society in 2009 with the intention of raising its profile and making it more relevant to the challenges that face informatics in health today. This was a logical step in a 20+ year career in and around health which has been marked by a belief that the NHS needs to be transformed to offer better care and better value and that improving the use of information and information technology must make an important contribution to achieving this.

Matthew joined the NHS as a graduate trainee in procurement, moving on to be Head of Information Technology at a large teaching hospital, then Deputy Chief Executive in a District General Hospital and ultimately Chief Executive of a large acute hospital, where he led the turn-around of one of the worst performing hospitals in England to become one of the best.

In 2005 he was asked to move to the Department of Health as Policy Advisor to the Secretary of State, a role that he filled for two years until the Prime Minister and Secretary of State changed. He then joined the NHS Management Board as the NHS's first Chief Information Officer, undertaking the NHS Informatics Review.

Matthew joined Tribal in May 2008 as Group Managing Director for its health practice, building one of the largest and most successful advisory and professional services businesses in the NHS. He has just announced that he will be leaving Tribal in the near future to join Cerner, with a remit to build their global health transformation capability, again viewing technology not as an end in itself, but a as a tool for improving services.

Matthew is a visiting Professor of Management at the University of Surrey and Chair of the Charitable Trustees at Imperial College Academic Health Sciences Centre.

Najeeb Al-Shorbaji

Biography

Has been working as Director, Department of Knowledge Management and Sharing at the World Health Organization Headquarters (WHO/HQ) in Geneva since September 2008. Prior to that he held the posts of Information Scientist, Regional Adviser for Health Information Management and Telecommunication and Coordinator for Knowledge Management and Sharing for WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region until August 2008. During his 14 years of work for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, he organized over 15 regional conferences on eHealth and health informatics, he initiated a number of eHealth projects, he lead the development of the regional health knowledge network and assisted countries in development of national eHealth plans and activities. He is from Jordan, married and holds a PhD in Information Sciences since 1986.

Dr Al-Shorbaji's portfolio covers WHO publishing activities and programmes, library and knowledge networks, eHealth. and WHO Collaborating Centres.

He is a member of a number national and international professional societies and associations specialised in information management and health informatics. He has authored over 80 research papers and articles presented in various conferences and published in professional journals.