Our Keynote Speakers
Prof Sarah Cunningham-Burley, Chair, Nuffield Council on Bioethics
Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and Professor of Medical and Family Sociology at the University of Edinburgh where she is co-head of the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute.
Keynote title: 'Put ethics first to create equitable and inclusive health futures'
Research does not operate in a social and ethical vacuum - we regularly look to advancing science
capabilities to drive innovative solutions to transform our health and how we deliver care. And it is the relationship between science and society that shapes the whole ecosystem and we need to
understand and reflect on this relationship.
Effective horizon scanning can help us anticipate future scientific developments and the opportunities and risks these may bring. It can also alert us to a range of ethical concerns, and to how and whether these are being taken into account at all stages of the innovation trajectory.
This presentation will use examples from the Nuffield Council of Bioethics work to highlight how
embedding ethics into horizon scanning, futures and foresight can support equitable and inclusive health and health care and the role of innovation within it.
It will explore how we should go beyond simply anticipating the ethical implications of emergent
scientific trends and seek to utilise ethics to shape such trends in the first place – placing issues such as equity and inclusion at the centre of decisions about where and what to innovate and exploring participatory approaches to doing so.
Will Moy, Chief Executive, The Campbell Collaboration
Will is Chief Executive of The Campbell Collaboration, an international social science research network that uses scientific methods to synthesise all of the evidence on important policy issues. It aims to make using state of the art social science evidence as natural as looking up a word in the dictionary.
Before joining the Campbell Collaboration, Will led the UK charity Full Fact, promoting trustworthy evidence use in public life, from 2010 to 2023. Full Fact’s fact checking and other work was used by tens of millions of people including policy makers, the media, and major internet companies. Working with international partners they built AI tools that have gone on to be used in more than forty countries worldwide.
Drawing on global experience, he will explore how trustworthy, inclusive evidence must underpin foresight and horizon scanning and how embedding equity and ethics from the outset leads to more accountable, resilient futures.
Chris Taylor, Sustainability Lead, Philips UKI
Chris Taylor is the UKI Sustainability Lead for Philips Healthcare, with over 20 years’ experience in medical imaging and a strong commitment to tackling climate change; he drives ambitious net zero initiatives and sustainable innovation across the industry, collaborating with partners and leading influential groups such as AXREM’s Sustainability Special Focus group and Healthtech Ireland’s Sustainability working group.
Chris will speak about how the healthcare technology and medical imaging sectors can reduce their environmental impact, covering Philips’ journey toward net zero, the role of innovation in creating a more sustainable health system, and how industry-wide collaboration and standards can help achieve ambitious climate goals.
Prof Dawn Craig, Director, NIHR Innovation Observatory
Professor Dawn Craig is the Director of the NIHR Innovation Observatory (est. 2017) and Professor of Evidence Synthesis at Newcastle University. A health economist by training, the early part of her career was spent honing her expertise in economic evaluation and systematic review methodologies. In 2014, she joined Newcastle University, where she established a successful Evidence Synthesis Group. She now co-leads the Evidence Synthesis Group and the Health Economics Group, two very active research groups.
She has senior investigator roles in two NIHR Policy Research Units (Healthy Ageing & Behavioural & Social Sciences) and co-leads the NIHR NENC ARC Enabling Methodology theme. She plays an active role in both the Newcastle & Partners NIHR RSS and the RSS national collaboration. As an applied methodologists these roles allow her to keep abreast of current methods and support the use of robust methods across a diverse range of projects.
Dawn will open the conference and set the scene for the overarching theme: Equity, Ethics and Inclusivity with emphasis on Foresights and Horizon Scanning.
Prof Dawn Craig, Director, NIHR Innovation Observatory
Meet our Panel
From Moonshot to Market – Innovation, Implementation and Impact
In an era defined by rapid technological advancement and complex global challenges, the journey from visionary ideas to real-world impact is more critical and more challenging than ever. This panel explores the lifecycle of innovation through the lens of futures thinking, evidence synthesis, and strategic implementation.
Bringing together thought leaders from academia, industry, and policy, we will examine:
- Moonshot Thinking: What does it take to imagine bold, transformative futures?
- Evidence-Informed Innovation: How can rigorous synthesis and evaluation guide the development of scalable solutions?
- Implementation Pathways: What are the barriers and enablers to translating innovation into practice?
- Impact Assessment: How do we measure success beyond commercial viability, considering societal, environmental, and ethical dimensions?
This session will discuss and debate the challenges and opportunities around how futures-oriented innovation can move from ideation to implementation, and ultimately, to meaningful impact.
Meet our Panel
Health Futures 2050: Equity, Sustainability and the AI Revolution
It’s 2050. The health and life sciences landscape looks dramatically different, more data-driven, more sustainable, more connected, but also more complex. In this forward-looking panel, chaired by Chris Taylor (UKI Sustainability Lead, Philips Healthcare), leaders from across academia, policy, and industry step into the future to imagine what an equitable and sustainable health system could look like and what it took to get there.
From the rise of AI and automation to the integration of sustainability as a core health value, panellists will use futures thinking to explore the breakthroughs, policy shifts, and partnerships that reshaped health and care between 2025 and 2050.
