Dr Aideen Keaney is the Director of the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Quality Improvement (HSCQI) Network, which is hosted within the Public Health Agency of Northern Ireland.

Aideen is a graduate of Queens University Belfast Medical School (MB BCh) and is a Fellow of the College of Anaesthetists at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (FCA RCSI).

Since taking up her post as Director of HSCQI, Aideen has been leading on the design, development and growth of HSCQI, with a particular focus on supporting the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care (HSC) system to share learning, identify and scale up best practice.

Aideen is a Scottish Patient Safety Programme Fellow and a Health Foundation Generation Q Fellow. Aideen also holds a Health Foundation sponsored Master’s Degree in Leadership for Quality Improvement.

Aideen has worked as a Consultant in Paediatric Anaesthesia and Paediatric Intensive Care for over 14 years. During this time Aideen has also held a number of Medical Leadership roles namely: Clinical Governance Lead, Clinical Lead for Patient Safety and Quality Improvement and Clinical Director.

Aideen is passionate about supporting the NI HSC system to deliver high quality care to all the citizens of Northern Ireland.

Aideen has been a Q member since October 2016.

Craig has over 10 years of commercial, strategic and operational management experience in UK healthcare, primarily in secondary acute care in the private sector. After training as a management consultant with PwC, during which time he worked on a range of projects in NHS Trusts and local government, he spent 6 years at Bupa, starting in internal consultancy but then conducting a range of operations transformation and managerial roles, across health insurance policy and funding, provider contracting, commissioning and pathway design, and customer experience and service excellence.

In 2018 he was one of the first employees at ASI Limited, a start-up who in 2019 founded OneWelbeck, a private multi-specialty out-patient and day-patient medical centre in Central London. As Commercial Director, Craig led the team responsible for driving volume and revenue growth into the centre, overseeing activities including digital and offline marketing, proposition development, referrer engagement and payor contracting and tariff negotiation.

Alongside joining Q’s advisory team, in 2022 Craig started working for CIL, a specialist strategy and commercial due diligence consultancy, as Associate Director in their Healthcare practice.

Hesham Abdalla is a consultant paediatrician and head of quality improvement at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. He is also a trustee at the Point of Care Foundation and has over 10 years experience of service improvement seen through the twin lenses of patient and staff experience and has led teams to a number of Patient Experience National Network and HSJ awards.

Hesham co-founded Hexitime, the first timebank supporting a community of practice, sharing skills, expertise and experience for the improvement of Health and Care.

Hesham has been a Q member since June 2017.

Joanne Matthews is the Head of Improvement Support and Safety at Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS). With a career that started in nursing, graduating from Caledonian University, Joanne has had a number of senior clinical, managerial and commissioning roles in the NHS across the UK. These have included acute hospital medicine, the national telephone triage and advice line, NHS Direct Kent, Surrey and Sussex and health and social care strategic commissioning for adult and children’s services within Brighton and Hove Primary Care Trust.

Since returning to Scotland in 2013 Joanne has led the development and delivery of a range national quality improvement programmes. This has included lead in the Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP), Value Management, Older People in Acute Care and more recently the HIS work to develop a Quality Management System. A Q member from the outset, Joanne has to date been the Q Scotland country partner representative supporting the Health Foundation in the development of Q.

Joanne has been a Q member since October 2016.

Prof John Boulton is currently National Director of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety and Director of Improvement Cymru at Public Health Wales. In 2012, whilst working as a Rheumatologist he was awarded a Quality Improvement fellowship at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, sponsored by the Health Foundation. This enabled him to develop a deep understanding of Improvement Science as well as observing how to achieve improvement at scale.

Prior to moving to Wales he worked in the State of Qatar as Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement at Hamad Medical Corporation, where he supported improvements in patient flow and patient safety, and supported the building of organisational improvement capability. He has interests in design thinking, quality management systems, mathematical modelling and patient safety. He is currently European faculty for the IHI’s Improvement Coach Professional Development programme. And in 2018 he became honorary Professor at the University of Swansea.

John has been a Q member since July 2018.

Malte Gerhold joined the Health Foundation in May 2022 as Director of Innovation and Improvement.

Malte leads the Foundation’s work to encourage faster improvement and innovation in care, building on its grant programmes and improvement networks to provide insights and enable change across health and social care. He also leads its work to explore how new technologies can provide the opportunities for better care quality, access and experience. And he oversees the Foundation’s improvement partnerships including the Q Community and THIS Institute.

He was previously Chief Integrated Care Officer at Birdie, a digital startup helping to reinvent the way we age, where he led its collaboration across social care and the NHS. Before that he was Executive Director of Strategy and Intelligence at the Care Quality Commission, leading on its methodology, analytics and communications, including its regulatory approach to new innovations and improvement. He has also lived and worked in Sierra Leone, and in the UK he worked at the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, the Department of Health, and Accenture.

He is a member of the Sciana Health Leaders Network, and a Fellow of the RSA. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the London School of Economics and a Masters and PhD from the University of Oxford.

Maureen is senior health professional with experience in quality improvement, quality and patient safety, clinical governance, policy making, clinical management, clinical nursing practice, education, research and publications. She has a passion for engaging staff and supporting people in working on their ideas for improvement.

Maureen trained as a Registered General Nurse at St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin where she worked for twenty-five years, specialising in peri-operative nursing, establishing the first post-registration anaesthetic nursing course and managing the critical care division. She has experience across a range of organisational and cultural settings, a track record of achievement and leadership in strategy formulation and implementation, designing and implementing change. Maureen was the Nurse Researcher with the Department of Health and Children (1998-2002) and the Irish Commission on Nursing (1997-1998). She had responsibility for the introduction of nurse and midwife medicinal product prescribing (2007-2011).

Maureen is a Fellow, Scottish Patient Safety Fellowship Programme with a PhD from Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School University College Dublin, exploring the practice of accountability for clinical governance; became a member of the Q Community in 2020; has a Master of Education and Master of Science focused in Health Services Education and Management, from University of Dublin, Trinity College; and Lean Healthcare Green Belt from Ontario Tech University.

Maureen has been a Q member since February 2020.

Penny joined the Health Foundation in 2011, leading work on improvement capability building, patient safety and improving flow, amongst other things. She has led the Q initiative since its inception. In 2022, while retaining overall responsibility for Q’s strategic direction, Penny will take on interim accountability for the Foundation’s portfolio of strategic initiatives, funding programmes and analysis aiming to improve the quality of health and care in the UK.

Before joining the Health Foundation, Penny was the Director of Strategy and Service Improvement at a trust in East London. Penny has spent her career leading improvement work at local and national level in the NHS, with particular expertise in process and system redesign, leading strategic change across organisations, developing networks to support improvement and collaborative design.

Stacey is Associate Director for Q and joined the Health Foundation in 2015 during its design phase to lead the initial set up of the initiative that now brings together over 4,000 people with expertise in improvement. Stacey leads the strategic delivery of several of Q’s areas of work and how Q delivers value to its members and organisations that make up the health and care system in the UK.

Stacey has a track record of setting up ‘start up’ multi-faceted national programmes. Including the set up of NHS Leadership Academy, where she supported the development and delivery of their national leadership development programmes and interventions, aiming to professionalise leadership in the NHS, for both individuals and teams.

She has an MSc in Healthcare Leadership from the University of Birmingham.

Viki Cooke is Co-Founder and Chair of BritainThinks. She has more than 30 years’ experience in strategic insight.

Viki is passionate about involving citizens in informed, influential and inspiring debates about the issues that impact on their lives and is well known for her work in this area. She leads BritainThinks’ work for the Cabinet Office and has, for the last 2 years, worked tirelessly with the COVID Response Team on public attitudes towards COVID-19.

Viki is former Founding Chair of Hubbub Foundation, a Trustee of The Climate Group and a Non-Executive Director of Blakeney Communications. Until January 2020 she was Vice Chair and Pro Chancellor of the University of Warwick.

Vin Diwakar is the Medical Director for Transformation in the National Transformation Directorate and leads on the secondary care portfolio in the National Improvement Directorate. He provides clinical leadership to improvement and transformation programmes including those which use improvement science, technology, digital, and data. He leads teams which are supporting improvement and transformation of a number of different clinical areas including diagnostics, urgent and emergency and planned care and is responsible for improving clinical effectiveness.

In his previous role, he provided clinical leadership to London’s health and care system and was a key member of the multi-professional regional team which led the capital through the COVID-19 pandemic.