Patients and their long term needs will again be the focus of this year’s Future of Health conference tomorrow, at which NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens will give the keynote address.

Continuing with the theme of putting patients at the heart of everything, the conference will again feature a People’s Panel – a unique approach which sees patients sitting alongside healthcare professionals and giving their own immediate feedback on what is being presented.

This innovative technique, which enables patients to play an active role in shaping the day, saw last year’s conference win Best Event of the Year for 2013 at the prestigious British Media Awards.

It’s not too late to grab one of the last remaining delegates places, to register go here.

Meet the members of this year’s People’s Panel:

Carol Pearson:  Carol took medical retirement in her late 30’s as a result of endometriosis. She is a trustee of Endometriosis UK – a support group leader, advocate and fundraiser on behalf of women with endometriosis.

Carol is passionate about patient empowerment and integrated healthcare. As a patient working and volunteering within the NHS and charity sector, she hopes to highlight at the Future of Health conference the urgent need to break down barriers between organisations to achieve better care for long term conditions.

Alex Silverstein: Alex has had Type 1 diabetes since he was 18 months old. He worked for Diabetes UK for two years before becoming the first President of the International Diabetes Federation’s Young Leaders in Diabetes (YLD) programme.

Alex is a big believer in building multi-disciplinary relationships, including patients, to bring about positive changes within healthcare and expects the Future of Health conference to be a microcosm for this future partnership delivery model of the NHS.

Sally Turner: Sally Turner is a writer, broadcaster and media consultant whose personal journey through chronic genital pain (due to vulvodynia) has inspired her to champion women’s sexual health and well-being.

Sally says: “I am keen to ensure that long-term sexual health conditions are represented at Future of Health, particularly vulval pain and dyspareunia which affect millions of women yet are rarely talked about publically.

“I want to offer new ideas that will help healthcare providers empower patients, reducing the stigma and isolation they so often feel.”

Fiona McLaughlin: Fiona has been living with M.E. for 8 years and volunteers for the Progressive Supernucleur Palsy (PSP) Association and Northern Ireland Rare Disease Partnership (NIRDP), of which she is a Director.

Fiona’s interest in healthcare developed after her late mother was diagnosed with the rare neurological condition Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Through her experiences as a carer Fiona learned that everybody’s condition is different, nobody has the same disease experience and that the expert in her mother’s experience was, in fact, her mother.

Jonathon Hope MBE: Jonathan was diagnosed with kidney failure whilst at school and has, for the last 10 years, chaired a wide range of local and national healthcare modernisation projects. In 2012 Jonathon was awarded an MBE for Services to Kidney Patients.

Jonathan says: “It was a privilege to attend the Future of Health event last year as a member of the people’s panel and to speak on long term conditions to nearly 1,000 attendees.

“Despite being invited to speak at over 50 venues and conferences over the last 10 years, I have never experienced a conference like it.

“This year I believe Future of Health will take their patient involvement approach to a totally new level. If you want to see a genuinely co-produced Conference in action, don’t miss it.”

Fiona Carey: Fiona has been a kidney cancer patient since 2001, is co-chair of the East of England Citizen Senate, a member of the Specialised Urology Cancer Clinical Reference Group and part of the Coalition for Collaborative Care.

Fiona works with NHS England on a number of initiatives; she helped to design and develop NHS Citizen and chaired the Wheelchair Services Summit with David Nicholson.

Fiona is passionate about 7-day services and patient-centred care and spoke on both these subjects at the Annual General Meeting this year.

Louise Langham: Louise has experience of caring for both parents living with dementia and is the Carers’ Co-ordinator for the Dementia Action Alliance’s Carers’ Call to Action, working to ensure support for family carers is prioritised.

Louise hopes to see a more joined up approach within the health service and with social care. Louise advocates that all people with dementia and their carers should be assigned a specialist, such as an Admiral Nurse, to provide ongoing, face to face support throughout their journey to improve health and wellbeing and avoid costly crisis interventions.

Dr Claire Corps: Claire has been a patient all her life due to renal failure as a young child, brain haemorrhages as a teenager and liver failure as an adult, and now helps run clinical trials in Leeds Teaching Hospitals, the same health trust whose care she is under.

Claire is a research Scientist who has seen the NHS from many sides. She was working for the Transplant Surgeons when she went into liver failure and her boss, Professor JPA Lodge, persuaded her to undergo a liver transplant and then carried it out on her.

Claire feels she is in a unique position of being able to see medical care from many angles and is passionate about patients knowing their own conditions and being able to explain to, and if necessary, challenge medical staff.

Nasreen Bawa: Nasreen is the treasurer of a Patient Participation Group at the Nuffield Road Medical Centre and Chair of Cambridge Rheumatoid Arthritis Self Help (CRASH), a support group she started in Cambridge.

Nasreen passionately believes that patients can be empowered to manage their condition better. She is delighted to have been chosen as a speaker for the Future of Health Conference 2014 and to participate as a member of the People’s Panel.

Her hope for the Future of Health is that it will enable a more empowering and holistic approach to patient care.

Priscilla Chandro: Priscilla Chandro suffered a heart attack at the age of 37 and has since become a patient and public representative.

She is an ambassador for the British Heart Foundation, a secretary for the Cardiovascular Care Partnership UK and a co-opted member of council for the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation.

Priscilla feels that partnership working between healthcare professionals and the public is paramount and that working together towards a common goal, serves a greater benefit to the end user.

Sally Cavanagh: Sally Cavanagh lives with two long term conditions and works as an independent consultant, specialising in strategy development in the field of self-management.

As someone who lives with long term conditions and has worked in the health sector nearly all her working life, Sally is able to look at pressing health and social care issues from both sides of the coin.

Corrine Hendy: Corrine is a peer support worker at Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust and has helped develop the peer service within Nottinghamshire Adult Mental Health services.

She is actively involved in different projects to promote recovery values and collaborative ways of working and is a co-organiser of Open Dialogue Nottingham, a community group working in partnership with Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust to improve the way services are delivered.

Corrine believes that Open Dialogue, which combines the voice of the person in distress and their social network with the voice of psychiatry, could be the future of mental health services in the UK.

The focus of this year’s Future of Health Conference is entirely about empowered individuals and carers and every session starts with a people’s panel representative.

Dr Martin McShane, NHS England’s Director for Long Term Conditions said: “This is a flagship conference which is key to driving forward our desire to empower patients and carers.

“We will hear much about the next steps on how we support the education and training of patients so they can self-manage their own care.

“We will also learn the latest steps on care planning, personal health budgets and on choices in mental health care.”

• To read more on why empowering patients is so vital to the future of the health and social care system, read Dr Martin McShane’s latest blog: Realising the greatest asset the NHS has.
• The Future of Health Conference is being staged at Kensington Olympia, London, tomorrow (Friday November 21), and will be opened by NHS England’s Chief Executive Simon Stevens.
• Other speakers will include Professor David Haslam, Chair of NICE, and Professor Steve Field, Chief Inspector of General Practice for the CQC, as well as Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s National Director for Patients and Information.
• To register go to: www.futureofhealth.co.uk