Sarah Clarke has been involved in the work of the British Cardiovascular Society since 2000. As Vice President for Education and Research, she became the first female Officer and Trustee of the Society in 2011. She was elected the first female President in 2015 and took the Society through an ambitious modernisation programme to provide a better service for members and deliver key initiatives in quality improvement, education, research and data science.

Dr Clarke trained in Cambridge, UK and at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA. She was appointed Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge in 2002. She was Clinical Director for Cardiac Services (2006-2012) and has been Clinical Director for Strategic Development since 2012. She was Cardiology Lead for the Cambridge and Peterborough STP from 2015-2019 developing evidence based clinical pathways across the system and addressing cross-cutting themes such as outpatients and out-of-hours oncall.

In 2017 she was appointed joint National Lead for Cardiology for the GIRFT, ‘Getting It Right First Time’ programme helping to improve the quality of care within the NHS by reducing unwarranted variations, bringing efficiencies and improving patient outcomes. The National Report for Caridiology is due publication later this year.

Dr Clarke was elected Councillor and Trustee to the Board of the Royal College of Physicians (London) in 2019, appointed a Trustee to the Board of the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and to the Board of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in 2019.  She is European Representative on the Assembly of International Governors American College of Cardiology (ACC) and Co-chair of the International Centres of Excellence Programme (ACC). Dr Clarke is Editor for Education in Heart, the international peer-reviewed journal and International Editor of the European Heart Journal.

In 2018 Dr Clarke was awarded the International Service Award from the American College of Cardiology for her outstanding contribution to enhancing cardiovascular care and education throughout the world.

Finally, in 2019 she ran the London Marathon which she sees as one of her biggest personal achievements and raised more than £10K for the BHF!

Professor Simon Ray graduated from Bristol University in Pharmacology in 1980 and in Medicine in 1983. After House Officer posts in Bristol, Medical SHO and Registrar jobs in Glasgow and Edinburgh he completed his MD as a British Heart Foundation research fellow with Prof Henry Dargie in Glasgow.

He continued cardiology training at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle before moving to CTC Liverpool as a senior registrar in 1992. From 1994-95 Simon was an interventional Cardiology fellow in Vancouver BC before appointment as Consultant Cardiologist in Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust in 1995.

His clinical and research interests have focused around valve disease, PFO, cardiac involvement in neuromuscular disease and more recently cardio-oncology.

Simon was Clinical Director of Cardiology at UHSM from 2006-2009, President of the British Society of Echocardiography 2007-2009, Vice President of the BCS for clinical standards from 2010-2013 and President of the British Heart Valve Society from 2013-2016. Simon was appointed Honorary Professor of Cardiology in 2011.

He is currently joint cardiology lead for Getting It Right First Time and President of the British Cardiovascular Society (2018-2021).

Ben Bridgewater is Chief Executive of Health Innovation Manchester, an academic health science system that brings together health, academia and industry. The mission is to accelerate innovation into practice at pace and scale, so to transform the lives of Greater Manchester’s 2.8 million citizens.

He is a leading expert on health informatics, national clinical audit, clinical governance, healthcare transparency, patient experience measurement and digital transformation in healthcare, publishing numerous high profile academic outputs and delivering innovative IT tools for disseminating clinical outcomes to professionals and the public.

Prior to joining Health Innovation Manchester, Ben worked for global technology company DXC Technology as the Director of the Healthcare and Lifesciences Global Build Advisory Team. Until January 2016, he was a cardiac surgeon at the University Hospital of South Manchester for nearly 18 years.

Ben also provided clinical leadership for the UK national cardiac audit programme, as well as leading analyses that provides UK hospital and cardiac surgery mortality rates to the public. The programme is world-leading and associated with a 50% reduction in risk-adjusted mortality over 10 years.

The BCS Hackathon organising committee are excited to announce that Professor Tony Young will be a judge on 4th June 2019 in Manchester.

Professor Young is National Clinical Director for Innovation at NHS England and Director of Medical Innovation, Anglia Ruskin University.

As National Clinical Director, Professor Young’s role is to provide clinical leadership and support in delivering improved health outcomes across the five domains of the NHS Outcomes Framework. In particular Tony focuses on generating economic growth through innovation and driving the uptake of proven innovations across the healthcare system.

Professor Young is also a practicing frontline NHS surgeon and has founded 4 Med-Tech start-ups in addition to co-founding the £500m Anglia Ruskin MedTech Campus which will become one of the world’s largest health innovation spaces.