TEHDAS Stakeholder forum 2022

Nick Fahy

Research Group Director for health and wellbeing, RAND Europe

Nicholas (Nick) Fahy is the research group director for health and wellbeing at RAND Europe, where he oversees research in such areas as health systems and healthcare innovation, workplace wellbeing, and the behavioural and social determinants of health and wellbeing.

Fahy joined RAND Europe from the University of Oxford, where he was a senior researcher in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and a research fellow at Green Templeton College. As a researcher and consultant in health policy and systems, he looked at how health systems work; lessons learned by comparing health systems across countries; and how to bring about constructive change in health systems.

Alongside his Oxford role, Fahy was also an expert advisor on innovation and implementation for the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, working with policymakers across Europe to support evidence-informed policy-making. This built on wide-ranging experience in international health policy, including over a decade in the European Commission, most recently as head of the health information unit.

Fahy has a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in evidence-based healthcare, specifically examining psychological theory and its role in the model of diffusion of innovations in healthcare. He is also a Chartered Psychologist and will continue to contribute to research and teaching at the University of Oxford and more widely.

Liisa-Maria Voipio-Pulkki

Chief Medical Officer and Senior Adviser

Dr. Liisa-Maria Voipio-Pulkki is currently Chief Medical Officer and Senior Adviser in the Permanent Secretary´s cabinet of the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. Before joining the Ministry in 2010, she served as the Senior Medical Adviser of the Finnish Association of Local and Regional Authorities and as a clinician and clinical researcher in the university hospitals in Helsinki and Turku, Finland.

Since 2014 she has been actively involved in the Finnish Government´s “Health Growth Strategy”, focusing on implementation of innovations in health systems and the impact of the act on secondary use of health and social data. Since 2017 she has chaired the Steering Committee of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, a WHO hosted partnership supporting evidence-informed health policy making.

Sandra García Armesto

Executive Director, Aragon Health Sciences Institute (IACS)

Medical Doctor, PhD Medicine, MSc Public Health (Autonomous University of Madrid), MSc Health Economics (University of York)

Since 2015, Sandra García Armesto has been the Executive Director of Aragon Health Sciences Institute (IACS). In this capacity she holds the positions of: Chair of the National Clearing House of Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Spanish National Health System (GuiaSalud); Director of the Aragon Health Technology Assessment Agency within the Spanish Network of HTA for the National Health System; and Director of the Centre for Biomedical Research in Aragon, gathering technological platforms and infrastructures integrated in several national research platforms such as biobanks, personalised medicine, bioinformatics, as well as the platform for innovation and fostering of industrial capacity in the NHS.

She is currently involved in the coordination of CSA HealthyCloud and oversees IACS contribution to TEHDAS Joint Action, PHIRI, ByCOVID and the forthcoming EHDS2 pilot, among other European initiatives in the electronic health data landscape.

García Armesto joined IACS in 2009 as ARAID Senior Researcher. Previously she served as health economist and policy analyst at OECD Health Division from 2005 to 2009. Before joining OECD she was head of the Health System Observatory at Madrid Regional Health Department, researcher and lecturer at the Centre of Public Health of the Autonomous University of Madrid, and research fellow at the Health Services Research Unit at Instituto de Salud Carlos III. She is an author of multiple publications and reports on health systems performance assessment in OECD countries, clinical practice variations and health technologies assessment. She has also contributed to several WHO publications on international comparison of health systems and health policy. She has served as expert in a number of working groups and evaluation panels for the EC and WHO.

Bert Verdonck

Program Manager, Health Data Initiatives and GAIA-X, Philips

Bert Verdonck has a 25+ year career in healthcare informatics and eHealth. He earned a PhD in signal and image processing from Telecom Paris and a MS in electro technical engineering of the university KU Leuven. He has a lifelong career at Philips which started in clinical software applications for radiology, cardiology and oncology. He extended experience into care solutions outside the hospital: home monitoring, regional eHealth solutions and population health management.

His geographic focus has been global, including focus on North America, International markets as well as EMEA. He held positions in clinical science, advanced development, product management, marketing, sales, business transformation, software engineering and general management. Since 2020 he is an active contributor to the Gaia-X initiative, in multiple committees and working groups. 

Rosie Richards

Assistant Director, NHS Confederation, European Office 

Rosie is Assistant Director for European Digital and Research Policy at the NHS Confederation. The NHS Confederation is a membership organisation that brings together, supports and speaks for the whole healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Rosie is also a champion for Understanding Patient Data, an initiative that aims to make uses of health data more visible, understandable and trustworthy. In addition, she holds the roles of UK National Contact Point for the EU Health Programmes and the UK Representative to the EU Joint Action Towards a Health Data Space where she plays a leading role in both the citizen engagement and governance work programmes.  

Previously Rosie worked for the UK Government as a European policy expert specialising in EU digital and health policy. During this time, she held positions in the Department for Business and the Department for Health and Social Care. Rosie has also worked in the National Health Service on both GDPR implementation and citizen engagement for digital transformation projects. Here Rosie’s focus was on how best to communicate complex digital health topics and engage and empower citizens on digital issues. Rosie’s specialisation is in health data for secondary use, specifically governance and citizen engagement.  

Michel Silvestri

Head of Unit, Swedish eHealth Agency

Dr Michel Silvestri is Head of Unit at the Coordination Department of the Swedish eHealth Agency, which according to its government assignment aims to contribute to improved healthcare, social care and the country’s health by pursuing the development of national e-health infrastructure and interoperability. 

Silvestri received his doctorate in immunobiology from the Karolinska Institute in 2000 and as Senior lecturer he held various positions at the Karolinska Institute.  

During the years 2001-2007, Silvestri was President of the Swedish Institute of Biomedical Laboratory Science, and 2018-2022 he was member of the Board of Directors of the Swedish Association of Health Professionals. Between 2016 and 2019 he was also head of the Medical Laboratory Centre of Gotland. Silvestri has been an elected member of the Stockholm County Council, during the years 2014-2017 with in the Health and Medical Board as well as the Research and Development Committee. 

At present he is responsible for the Swedish eHealth Agency’s role as national competent authority in the TEHDAS as well as the X-eHealth consortia. He is also member of the Policy Board of the Nordic Health Data Commons, and responsible for a government assignment on the development of a national health data space. 

In summary, Silvestri has experience from Life Science and Healthcare, Higher Education and Research, Project Management, Public and Governmental Administration, Politics and Policymaking. 

Coen van Gool

Head of WHO collaborating centre for the Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC), Epidemiologist/Psychologist at Centre for Public Health Forecasting (RIVM)

Coen H. van Gool works as a project lead for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in the Netherlands. Besides his involvement in Work Package 5 on governance of the JA TEHDAS, he heads the WHO collaborating centre for the Family of International Classifications in the Netherlands.

Being convinced that better (exchange of) health data leads to better health information, he participates in several health information standardization initiatives, both nationally and internationally. Van Gool has a background in both psychology and epidemiology.