Transforming our future: prediction, prevention and early diagnosis in healthcare

Sir Mark Walport is Foreign Secretary and Vice President, the Royal Society. He chairs Imperial College Health Partners, Imperial College Academic Health Sciences Centre and the Kennedy Memorial Trust. He is a non-executive board member of NHS England, and trustee of the British Museum and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.

Previous career highlights include:
Founding Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), 2017 to 2020
Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA), 2013 to 2017
Member and latterly co-chair of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology
Director of the Wellcome Trust
Professor and Head of the Division of Medicine, Imperial College London
Founder Fellow and first Registrar of the Academy of Medical Sciences
Member of the Advisory Board of Infrastructure UK

Professor Chris Whitty is the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, the UK Government’s Chief Medical Adviser, and head of the public health profession. He is a practising NHS Consultant Physician at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, as well as a Visiting Professor at Gresham College. An epidemiologist by background, Chris has carried out extensive research and clinical work in the UK, Africa, and Asia. Before becoming CMO, he was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where he now holds an honorary professorship. From December 2024 to June 2025, Chris served as interim Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Prior to that, he was the Department’s Chief Scientific Adviser from January 2016 to August 2021, overseeing research and development and serving as head of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the government’s principal funder of clinical, public health, social care, and translational research. He also served as interim Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017 to 2018, during which he played a key role in the government’s response to the Novichok poisonings. Earlier in his career, he was Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID), where he led technical work on major global health challenges, including the West Africa Ebola outbreak and other international health emergencies.

Dr Charlotte Refsum is a trained physician and expert in health policy. Her work focuses on harnessing the power of AI and other technology to drive prevention, create sustainable health systems and achieve health for all. Working alongside Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir John Bell, her thought leadership contributes significantly to policy discussions of social-care policy, biotechnology and health care in the AI era. Over the course of her career, Charlotte has worked in 25 countries to support the transformation of health systems globally.

Professor Peter Donnelly FMedSci FRS is Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford and the Founder and CEO of Genomics plc. After studying for a doctorate in Mathematics in Oxford as an Australian Rhodes Scholar, he had a world-leading academic career in statistical and human genetics which included Professorships at the Universities of London, Chicago, and Oxford, and a decade as Director of Oxford’s Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Peter has been one of the drivers of the “Genetic Revolution”, the explosion in our knowledge of genetic variants associated with common human diseases and the increasing use of genetics in clinical medicine, through his leadership of the landmark Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, the International HapMap Consortium, and the WGS500 project, which pioneered whole genome sequencing in clinical medicine and led to the UK NHS 100,000 Genomes project. He is one of the global leaders in the development of statistical and machine learning algorithms to analyse and extract insights from modern genomic “big data”, with his papers introducing new methods cited over 40,000 times. Peter chaired the Royal Society’s policy working group on Machine Learning.

Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox is Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and General Practice at Queen Mary University of London, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and an NIHR Senior Investigator. She has pioneered the use of large-scale electronic health record data to develop, validate, and implement clinical risk prediction models that improve prevention, diagnosis, and patient outcomes. She created the first risk prediction models using routinely collected electronic health care data and has continued to update and refine them as new evidence emerges. These innovations have directly informed NICE guidance and driven updates to national clinical guidelines. As founder and director of QResearch, one of the world’s largest medical research databases, she has led the development of tools such as QRISK, QDiabetes and, QCancer – now embedded in NHS systems and used over 10 million times each year to identify patients at high risk of major conditions where early intervention can improve outcomes. Their widespread adoption has brought probabilistic reasoning and risk-based decision-making into everyday clinical practice, enabling more personalised and data-informed care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Hippisley-Cox developed QCOVID at the request of the UK Chief Medical Officers, guiding shielding policy, vaccine prioritisation, and subsequent vaccine safety analyses. Her contributions have been recognised with the RCGP John Fry Award, the Florence Nightingale Award from the Royal Statistical Society, and six Research Paper of the Year awards. She remains committed to rigorous, transparent research that strengthens the evidence base for patient care.

Dr Seamus Harrison is Chief Medical Officer at Genomics Ltd, where he leads on translation of genetic technology into products and services that improve human health and longevity. He leads on initiatives such as partnerships with Our Future Health, Bupa, and also with biopharma partners. A cardiovascular surgeon by training, he served as a consultant at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, where he led the regional aneurysm screening service for Cambridgeshire. He is also formally trained in genetic epidemiology, earning a PhD from UCL. His research spans cardiovascular genetics, Mendelian randomisation, screening and patient safety, and he received funding from the British Heart Foundation and MRC.

Margarete is the Oncology Lead in the Centre for Genomics Research at AstraZeneca, and an Honorary Consultant Haematologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Following her medical training at Oxford University, she trained as an academic haematologist in London and Cambridge, focussing on haematopoietic ageing and the pre-clinical evolution of cancer. She co-leads the NHS Clonal Haematopoiesis Clinic in Cambridge, with the goal of preventing haematological malignancies. Since 2022, she has also led the Oncology research and development at the AstraZeneca Centre for Genomics Research in Discovery Sciences.

Professor Peter Donnelly FMedSci FRS is Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford and the Founder and CEO of Genomics plc. After studying for a doctorate in Mathematics in Oxford as an Australian Rhodes Scholar, he had a world-leading academic career in statistical and human genetics which included Professorships at the Universities of London, Chicago, and Oxford, and a decade as Director of Oxford’s Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Peter has been one of the drivers of the “Genetic Revolution”, the explosion in our knowledge of genetic variants associated with common human diseases and the increasing use of genetics in clinical medicine, through his leadership of the landmark Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, the International HapMap Consortium, and the WGS500 project, which pioneered whole genome sequencing in clinical medicine and led to the UK NHS 100,000 Genomes project. He is one of the global leaders in the development of statistical and machine learning algorithms to analyse and extract insights from modern genomic “big data”, with his papers introducing new methods cited over 40,000 times. Peter chaired the Royal Society’s policy working group on Machine Learning.

Professor Ahmet Fuat was a GP in Darlington, County Durham for 37 years, where he was CVD and Research Leads for Darlington Primary Care Network and Darlington GP Federation. He joined Oberoi Consulting as Medical Director in September 2023 and also works as an Honorary Consultant Lipidologist/GPSI within the diabetes and endocrinology team at County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust, running a secondary prevention and genetic lipid clinic. He has been a GPSI Cardiology for over 25 years having undertaken a Postgraduate Diploma in Cardiology at Bradford University graduating with distinction. He went on to be a tutor on the course for many years teaching on HF, HVD, AF and IHD. He started the first one stop diagnostic and integrated heart failure clinic in the UK in 2002 with local colleagues. His PhD by research in heart failure diagnosis and management including work on natriuretic peptides generated several publications that have informed guidelines and led to the award of an Honorary Professorial Chair at Durham University. He has contributed to various NICE and ESC CVD and HF guidelines, and RCGP CKD/AKI toolkit. He has held and holds various roles in CVD and research including the being past President, education and research leads of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society (PCCS) which he was instrumental in reforming, and previous Lipid and Heart Failure primary care lead for North East and North Cumbria Academic Health Science Network. He sits on the NHSE CVD Prevention Clinical Leadership group and NHSE expert advisory group for Heart Failure and Heart Valve disease. He was a founder member of CaReMe UK representing the PCCS. He is currently Vice Chair of the HEART UK Lp(a) Task Force, and advisor to Pumping Marvellous, a Heart Failure patient charity. He has a passion for medical education and remains an active lecturer, tutor and researcher. He is on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Cardiology and Primary Care Cardiovascular Journals and a peer reviewer for most high impact Cardiovascular journals and research bodies. His work in community cardiology has been recognised with Fellowships from the RCGP, RCP London and RCP Edinburgh, ESC and the PCCS. He has led many quality improvement initiatives over the years in HF, AF, Lipids, hypertension, diabetes and CKD. His work on HF was included in their BHF blueprint for HF. Much of this work was carried out using Oberoi digital adit platforms as has been replicated by colleagues across the UK, benefiting patients and practices positively.

Dr Juliet Usher-Smith is an Associate Professor in General Practice and Head of the Primary Care Unit in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on optimising the implementation of risk-stratified medicine to promote prevention and early detection of cancer and cardiovascular disease. This includes the development and validation of risk models, evaluation of the societal, psychological and behavioural aspects associated with their use, and conducting trials of incorporating risk models within clinical pathways. She has a particular interest in risk-stratified bowel cancer screening and risk assessment for breast cancer amongst young women and has led work on understanding and overcoming technical barriers to implementation of risk assessment within primary care.

Professor Dame Sue Hill DBE FMedSci FRSB FRCP(Hon) FRCPath (Hon) FHCS (Hon) is the Chief Scientific Officer for England and the NHS in England, is the Head of Profession for the scientific workforce and provides scientific leadership and advice for the wider health and care system. A respiratory scientist by background, she has an international academic and clinical research reputation. Dame Sue leads and directs Genomics in the NHS, driving the world-leading programme to introduce a nationwide Genomic Medicine Service working in partnership between the NHS and academia, industry, UK and international governments/initiatives, building on her work in heading up the NHS contribution to the world-leading 100,000 Genomes Project. Sue was made a Dame Commander in 2018 in recognition of the scale of her contribution to British genomics, having previously been awarded an OBE in 2005 in recognition of her services to healthcare science.

Rory Collins is an epidemiologist who studies prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. He is the founding Head of Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Population Health. During the past 40 years, he has conducted large randomised trials which have demonstrated that clot-dissolving and clot-preventing treatments during a heart attack more than halve mortality, and that lowering LDL-cholesterol with statins safely reduces cardiovascular death and disability. He has led UK Biobank since 2005. Involving 500,000 participants, it is the largest deeply-characterized prospective study globally, available for health research. About 20,000 researchers worldwide actively use it, generating ~5000 papers in 2024 alone.

Professor Raghib Ali is the CEO, Chief Investigator and Chief Medical Officer of Our Future Health, the largest health research programme of its kind in the world with over 2.5 million participants. He is also a Clinical Epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge; Research Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi and an Honorary Consultant with the Office for Health Disparities and Improvement. He graduated from Cambridge University and has been awarded postgraduate degrees in Epidemiology and Public Health from the Universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. His main research interests are in health inequalities and specifically in improving understanding of the causes of non-communicable diseases in neglected populations – in the UK, India and the Middle East. He has been involved in population health research since 2004 nationally and globally, working firstly on UK Biobank, then leading studies of cancer incidence by ethnic group in England and India from 2005 to 2013 and established the UAE Healthy Future Study in 2014 which focuses on understanding the causes of common chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthdays Honours 2022 for services to the NHS and the Covid-19 response and elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, ‘the highest accolade the Faculty can bestow and is awarded to those who have given exceptional service to the science, literature or practice of public health’ in April 2023.

Dr Richard Scott is Chief Executive Officer at Genomics England and before this was Chief Medical Officer and Deputy CEO. He joined the organisation in 2015.

He is also a Consultant and Honorary Associate Professor in Clinical Genetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the UCL Institute of Child Health where his practice focuses on diagnosing children with rare multisystem disorders.

Richard trained in medicine at Cambridge University and University College London. He specialised in Paediatrics and subsequently Clinical Genetics in London and completed his PhD on childhood cancer syndromes at the Institute of Cancer Research.

Through his clinical practice and in his role at Genomics England he is passionate about harnessing the power of new genomic technologies for the benefit of all patients in mainstream healthcare.

Lawrence Tallon is the Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). He was previously Deputy Chief Executive at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, where he led the Trust’s approach to strategy, technology, innovation and improvement. He has extensive experience across the healthcare sector in strategy and leadership roles, including within the Department of Health and Social Care alongside ministers and NHS leaders.

Tony Wood was appointed Chief Scientific Officer designate on 19 January 2022 and became Chief Scientific Officer, with full accountability for GSK R&D, with effect from 1 August 2022.

Tony is a highly respected scientist and one of the world’s pre-eminent medicinal chemists, with more than 30 years of experience working across diverse disciplines of R&D to deliver innovative medicines. He joined GSK from Pfizer in 2017 as Senior Vice President, Medicinal Science and Technology, responsible for all science and technology platforms supporting the delivery of new medicines.

He has led large-scale global organisations in drug discovery and development in multiple therapeutic areas, including immunology, oncology and infectious diseases. Tony has been integral to delivering the recent improvements in GSK’s R&D productivity and central to developing its R&D approach focusing on science of the immune system, human genetics and advanced technologies. He built GSK’s functional genomics and AI/ML organisations from the ground up, and was the architect of collaborations with UK biotech Adrestia, Oxford University, and the Laboratory for Genomics Research with Jennifer Doudna.

Tony invented an HIV antiviral medicine for which he won several international awards including the PhRMA Discoverers Award, the Prix Galien USA, the ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award, and the UCB Ehrlich Award from the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.

Tony has lived and worked in both the UK and the US. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, from whom he has also received an Honorary Fellowship, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Tony was closely involved with the UK Government’s COVID-19 planning, notably establishing the GSK/AstraZeneca/Cambridge University testing facility at the University’s Anne McLaren Laboratory.

Tony has a BSc in chemistry and PhD in organic synthesis from the University of Newcastle, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College, London.