Speaker Biographies

Lee Omar, CEO Safe Steps

Lee is a fellow of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) which supports exceptional individuals to scale promising innovations across England’s NHS for greater patient and staff benefit. Last year was awarded “NIA Fellow of The Year” presented by Professor Stephen Powis, the National Medical Director of NHS England. In recognition of Safe Steps work to reduce hospital admissions during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

He is a graduate of NHS England sponsored Insight Programme that Identifies high-quality candidates to become Non-Executives on NHS Trust boards. Have been a trainee NED at Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Trust and Lancashire Care NHS Trust. 

Recently completed a 3 year term as Non-Executive Director at Borough Care, a not-for-profit organisation, that operate 12 care homes in North West with a brief to innovate and leverage digital to enable us to live our best possible life as we age.

Is founder and chair of registered charity, SOLA, that has supported over 7000 people with mental health challenges and PTSD to flourish. Is a trustee of the ADHD Foundation, the UK’s leading neurodiversity charity, offering a strength-based, lifespan service for the 1 in 5 of us who live with ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia and Tourette’s syndrome.

Before founding working in tech, he worked in Human Rights sector for 11 years. empowering refugees to build new lives. In his spare time, he is studying for a PhD at Lancaster University in the design of digital health applications that leverage artificial intelligence for Population Health Management.

Sarah Cockayne, research fellow, York Trials Unit, University of York

Sarah has more than 20 years’ experience coordinating and managing large scale multi-centred pragmatic randomised controlled trials in both primary and secondary care in the fields of falls prevention, podiatry and cardiology.  She has coordinated three large National Institute for Health and Care Research, falls prevention studies, involving over five thousand participants. She is currently the Chief Investigator on the NIHR PHR funded FIREFLI study which is evaluating the Fire and Rescue Service’s Safe and Well Visits to prevent falls in older people.  Sarah is also an Associate Editor on BMC Trials and is a member of the UK Trial Manager’s Network Executive Group. 

https://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/our-staff/sarah-cockayne/

Dr Emma Stanmore PhD, MRes, BNurs (Hons), DN, RN. Reader, DNMSW/School of Health Sciences, Manchester University.

Dr Emma Stanmore, Reader in the School of Health Sciences gained her Bachelors, Masters and PhD from the University of Manchester and is the Deputy Lead for the Healthy Ageing Research Group. Emma has over 20 years combined experience in healthcare, research and teaching with a particular focus on health innovation (new ways of delivering care or use of digital health technologies to promote uptake, access to services and avoid hospitalisation) and the promotion of healthy ageing.  Before joining the Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work in 2005, Emma implemented a number of new healthcare schemes as a Clinical Manager in primary care, including hospital at home for patients with COPD, generic healthcare assistants (trained in nursing, physio, OT and SALT), community rapid response schemes and care home training co-ordinators all with the aim of reducing unnecessary hospital admissions and improving the care for older people. 

Emma has completed research projects investigating falls incidence, fear of falling and risks for people with rheumatoid arthritis, user-centred health technologies in rehabilitation (RehabMat to measure balance using iMagiMat technology), the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Exergames (gamified active-video games that track real time adherence) for falls prevention exercises amongst older people. Her current programme of research focuses on using gamification to improve health literacy and prevent functional decline in older adults. 

Emma also works as an Ambassador for Manchester: Integrating Medicine and Innovative Technology (MIMIT™ affiliate of MIT, Boston) to accelerate development of new healthcare technologies by enabling innovators. She is Business Engagement Lead for the Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, charged with increasing industry/commercial collaborations. She has held grants as PI from Versus Arthritis, MRC, Innovate UK, ESRC, Wellcome Trust and NHS Trusts and as Co-I from the European Commission, NIHR and Innovation Fund Denmark.