Individual / Professional members

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Candidates 

• John Farenden

A Chartered Engineer with a first degree in Computation (Applied Computer Science) and a Masters in Information Systems Design and a member of the British Computer Society since 1978. 

I have worked in the field of health informatics / digital health for over 35 years, for 30 years in a consulting capacity with both large multi-national and small specialist consultancy businesses. For the last 5 years I have been Programme Director of the NHS England Shared Care Records Programme before taking voluntary redundancy in May 2023 as part of the NHS England downsizing. I am currently working as an independent consultant on my own account and as an Associate consultant of partners whose values I share, including Ethical Healthcare Consulting and the Professional Record Standards Body.

It is clear to me that the future landscape for health and care information systems needs to adopt an approach which moves beyond monolithic systems and their suppliers and instead enables health and care systems to progressively move towards the separation of data and application in order to both promote innovation and mitigate the risk of supplier lock-in. This can only be achieved through the adoption of commonly recognized international standards. In that respect openEHR has a key role to play as a central part of an eco-system of standards, and supported by an eco-system of product and service suppliers, both large and small, who are committed to the adoption of open standards. Ultimately the adoption of such open standards should enable the increased sharing of resources and expertise, which can both accelerate some aspects of implementation while reducing overall cost of ownership.

It would be a privilege to work as an member of the openEHR International Board.

• Medhi Khaled

A Medical Doctor and a Health and Tech Executive with over 25 years of international contribution on top of many organisations, four continents, 40 health systems and a few patent applications.

My work spans across pragmatic healthcare strategies, technology standards, product management, regulations, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, adoption and impact.
With a solid track record in national digital health strategies, my current focus is on initiatives which aim at elevating health outcomes and promote prevention in a very cost-effective way.

I’m passionate about value-based care and believe the adoption of openEHR in national settings is key to achieving this goal. I’m therefore humbled to be supporting a number of like-minded organisations and leaders toward this exciting new horizon.

I'd be thrilled to be part of this board to help shape the future of openEHR.

• Heather Leslie

A clinician informatician, I've long championed technology-driven healthcare, beginning with a pioneering GP prescribing system in Australia launched in 1995. Early challenges (& failures) strongly identified the need for data standardisation. My journey with openEHR began in 2004 and since 2008 I have had the privilege of actively shaping the openEHR clinical modelling approach & holding key leadership roles within the Clinical Program. Identifying patterns in health data & transforming them into archetypes is my happy place! Until 2017, I was also the Product Manager for Ocean Health Systems’ unique Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) tool, purpose-designed to support openEHR’s clinical knowledge governance requirements. Over the last 15 years, I've trained professionals in openEHR & clinical modelling across more than 20 countries & actively participated in Australian & international standards, including ISO & HL7. My contributions to openEHR, clinical modelling & healthcare informatics have been demonstrated in published academic papers, conference proceedings, & book chapters. In 2018 I founded my consultancy firm, Atomica Informatics, specialising in data standardisation & clinical knowledge governance to international & national clients. In 2017, I also graduated from the AICD's Company Directors course, which gave me a deep perspective on best-practice organisational governance. A critical takeaway for me was the role of the Board in establishing a healthy culture & ethical approach aligned with organisational values, such that it permeates & impacts the entire organisation.

It is no secret that in recent years I have removed myself from various openEHR operational roles due to a ‘culture clash’. However, as the organisation welcomes a CEO, I embrace the opportunity to return & contribute my unique mix of skills & experience as a Board member. My focus areas include: Strategic Development: Assisting in crafting & implementing a strategic plan aligned with openEHR International's mission & long-term goals. Governance: Building a resilient governance framework that encompasses organisational policy, risk management, & compliance, to lay a strong foundation for openEHR's growth as a globally recognised standards organisation. Clinical Program Advocacy: Advancing the mission-critical Clinical Program, which has not received the attention it merits in recent times. Diversity & Inclusion: Creating a more diverse & inclusive culture within both the leadership & the broader organisation, with an emphasis on giving clinicians an equal voice in a field that is often technically driven.

With a longstanding commitment to openEHR International’s mission, I now welcome the new opportunity to serve on the Board. My vision is to ensure that the organisation remains sustainable, adaptable, & at the forefront of the evolving digital health landscape.

• Gary McAllister

Gary McAllister is the Chief Technology Officer for the NHS in London, deploying openEHR across the city. Gary is also the national director for Technology Strategy, Architecture and Standards. As part of Gary’s national role, he is responsible for the mandate, adoption, and implementation of standards across the country – of which, openEHR forms a fundamental part of the new national strategy for the NHS.

With over 20 years’ experience in the health industry Gary has worked at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust, King’s College Hospital and lectures at Imperial College London on the NHS Digital Leadership Academy. Gary has also authored An Introduction to Digital Healthcare in the NHS – an Amazon best seller about NHS IT.

It is my intention to establish openEHR as the single clinical modelling language for the NHS. I am in the process of establishing the business case for the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for OpenEHR in England through my national role. This CoE will host the CKM, provide a national toolset for learning OpenEHR, fund a national clinical lead for OpenEHR and the CKM as well as inject the needed technical expertise to create vendor compilers for architypes so that they can be ingested into existing systems.

From a London perspective I will continue to leverage the openEHR implementation as an international exemplar for the adoption of the ecosystem, making the models available at the point of care.

• Pablo Pazos

Been working with openEHR since 2006 with hands on experience for 17 years on the specs. Helped improve the specs and the reference implementation.

My degree thesis was building a trauma EHR implementing openEHR (2009-2010). In 2011 offered the first online course 100% about openEHR in Spanish. In 2013 released the first open source openEHR CDR implementation: EHRServer. From 2015 I'm a qualified member of the SEC and participated in MEDINFO 2015 offering talks and training about openEHR alongside with other openEHR colleagues. In 2017 participated of the SEC F2F meeting in the Netherlands, from which we released the first openEHR REST API specification. In 2019 released the openEHR Toolkit, an online set of tools to work with technical components of openEHR. In 2023 released Atomik, a new openEHR clinical and demographic data repository. In the middle I offered many courses related with openEHR topics, both online and on-site. I also participated on both intents of the Education Program.

I would like to contribute on the area of conformance verification and certification as a topic on the board agenda, based on the interest in this area from many industry partners. A second item is to help getting the Software Program working once again. Also want to learn about other topics in the openEHR agenda and the internal management processes, to understand how things work in the management area.

• Kanthan Theivendran

Kanthan qualified in medicine from Imperial College London in 2003 and obtained a BSc in Orthopaedic Science from University College London in 2001 whilst an undergraduate. He completed his Orthopaedic training in Birmingham and specialist fellowship training in shoulder and upper limb surgery in Derby & Wrightington.

He is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust since 2016 and is the Upper limb and Research lead within the department. He sits on the R&D committee for the trust. Mr Theivendran is an Honorary Professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Biomedical Engineering Research Unit at Aston University and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Orthopaedic Surgery at Aston Medical School. His interests include Clinical trials, Biomedical Engineering, Health Tech/Health IT and patient reported outcome measures (PROMs).

Over the last 8 years I have seen the challenges of digital health and in particular the interoperability challenges. I came across openEHR about 5 years ago and its vision of a vendor and technology neutral semantic interoperability data standard that really captured my imagination and I truly believe openEHR will serve a huge purpose to improve digital health now and the future. Its a compelling standard as its archetypes and templates are governed and co-created with clinicians. The ability to re-use archetypes and templates in an open way really appeals to me. I have developed openEHR modelling skills by completing the openEHR introductory and basic courses. I have contributed to reviewing archetypes on the CKM. I have also created archetypes and uploaded them to the CKM. I am an editor on the UK Apperta CKM.