MEET THE
SPEAKERS
Professor Lord Ara Darzi of Denham
Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London
Professor Lord Ara Darzi of Denham is Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery. Named in TIME100 Health 2025, he is an
internationally recognised academic, surgeon, leader in global health policy and former UK Health Minister (2007-9).
In his role as Executive Chair of the Fleming Initiative Professor Darzi leads a global movement to combat antimicrobial resistance. In 2024, he led the Independent Investigation of the NHS in England. He is a
consultant surgeon, and is Executive Chair of the World Innovation Summit for Health and the Pre-emptive Health & Medicine Initiative at Flagship Pioneering.
A Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, he was knighted in 2002, introduced to the House of Lords in 2007, appointed to His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council in 2009 and awarded
the prestigious Order of Merit in 2016.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Mr Justice Poole
Justice of the High Court (Family Division)
Mr Justice Nigel Poole practised at the bar in Manchester for 30 years, specialising in clinical negligence, before his appointment to the Family Division of the High Court in 2020. He was appointed a QC in 2012 and became
Head of Kings Chambers in 2017.
He was a legal assessor to the GMC Fitness to Practice Panel, a chair of the Bar Tribunal and Adjudication Service, a
Recorder, and a Deputy High Court Judge prior to his fulltime appointment. Between 2021 and 2025 he was the Family Presiding Judge for the Northeast Circuit. He has responsibility for triaging all new serious medical treatment
cases brought in the High Court that involve children.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Kathy Rowan
Founder and Scientific Advisor to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC)
Kathy is Founder and Scientific Advisor to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC), Honorary Professor at both the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and has recently stepped down (end-September 2026) as Programme Director of the Health and Social Care Delivery Research funding programme for the UK NIHR. Kathy established ICNARC.
in 1994 as an independent, not-for-profit, scientific organisation to facilitate improvements in critical care - for patients and for those who care for them. As Director, over thirty years, Kathy led the design, delivery, and
dissemination of a broad programme of clinical audit and clinical/health services research, nationally and internationally. Kathy was awarded the Humphry Davy Medal by the UK Royal College of Anaesthetists (2004), a Harkness Fellowship (2004/5), the President’s Prize with honorary life membership of the
UK Intensive Care Society (2019) and became an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (Queen’s Birthday Honours’ List, 2021) for services to research and intensive care.
SPEAKER
Prof Anthony Gordon MBE
Head of Division of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care at Imperial
Prof Anthony Gordon MBE, FMedSci is the Head of Division of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care at Imperial, an NIHR Senior Investigator and Director of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme. His research focuses on developing precision medicine in sepsis. He leads a multidisciplinary group investigating the use of -omic techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve outcomes in sepsis. He has led multiple clinical trials that have shaped international sepsis guidelines. He leads the Bayesian adaptive platform trial REMAP-CAP, for COVID-19 and influenza in the UK, that has improved treatments for and saved hundreds of thousands of lives from severe
COVID-19 around the world.
SPEAKER
