KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Keynote Speakers  

Janet Askham (sponsored by South Link Education Trust)

Janet Askham is Director of Research at Picker Institute Europe, where she leads research on the experiences and needs of users in their relationships with health and social care services. She is Professor of Social Gerontology at King’s College, University of London (KCL), and was Director of the Institute of Gerontology at KCL from 1998 to 2004. She is scientific adviser to the UK government's Department of Health, for their Policy Research Programme on Older People and a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People (the regulatory body for the UK communications industries).

She is a sociologist whose research career has covered topics spanning the life course. In particular her interests include: health, welfare and social policy issues - for example, patient-centred care, professionalism in healthcare, health promotion, services and informal care for people with dementia; family and marital relationships: in recent years particularly the marital relationships and caring roles of older people; understandings and negotiations of self in the social world: including research on people’s perceptions of the life course, the future and their own lifespan.

Matt Handley

Matt Handley, MD is Associate Medical Director, Quality and Informatics for Group Health Cooperative, one of America's largest consumer-governed health care systems.  Dr. Handley is responsible for quality improvement and technology, working to create an infrastructure that supports the highest levels of organisational performance.  He has been a physician with Group Health since 1984, and maintains a primary care practice at the Family Health Medical Center at the Capitol Hill Campus in Seattle.

In his previous position as medical director of Health Informatics at Group Health, Dr Handley led the implementation of Epic and MyGroupHealth for both patients and clinicians at Group Health.  The electronic medical record is shared online with patients, with over 106,000 patients participating online with their clinical teams. 

Dr. Handley has been involved with multidisciplinary teams at Group Health and at Kaiser Permanente's Care Management Institute in the development and implementation of over 20 clinical practice guidelines. He has been the clinical leader in Group Health's guideline efforts for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Handley has worked with groups around the country to develop clinical guideline programmes and lectured extensively on topics including evidence-based medicine, implementation of clinical guidelines, cardiovascular disease prevention, prostate cancer screening, and hepatitis C.  Dr. Handley fulfilled a six-month appointment with the Ministry of Health in New Zealand, helping establish programmes in evidence based medicine and clinical guidelines.  He also directed the development of the now 5,000-page, Group Health clinical Web site.

Dr. Handley attended Northwestern University where he studied biomedical engineering and applied mathematics.  He received his Doctor of Medicine at the University of California at Davis and completed residency training in family practice at Group Health.

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