Royal College of Nursing Representing nurses and nursing, promoting excellence in practice, shaping health policies

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Meet the Team

Tim James

Tim James

Co-Chair

Health Care Executive (Cerner), and Paediatric Nurse (NHS)

Tim is an experienced paediatric critical care nurse. Whilst at Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) he became the first clinical informatics nurse within The Evelina London Children's Hospital developing and implementing patient at a glance and acuity solutions. Tim is now a clinical executive and leader at Cerner.

Tim is passionate about building partnerships with NHS leaders, especially Chief Clinical Information Officers (CCIOs) and Chief Nursing information Officers (CNIOs), to ensure that digital transformation delivers real improvements to patient outcomes and user adoption. His experience with advising on governance and serving with a handful of NHS Trust digital programme boards enables him to work closely with leaders to ensure that the clinical objectives are at the forefront of discussions and decisions.

As an advocate for the development of digital and documentation standards, Tim has supported Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) workshops and participates in membership at the Faculty of Clinical Informatics. He is excited to be part of the forum committee to influence the development of digital nursing leadership across the profession and to elevate the impact nurses have on improving patient care outcomes through digital innovation.

Dawn Dowding

Dawn Dowding

Co-Chair

 

Dawn is a Professor in Clinical Decision Making, Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, UK. Dawn is a nurse and health services researcher, with expertise in the field of health care decision-making and nursing informatics. Her particular research interests are the development and evaluation of decision support tools, and more recently the application of Health Information Technology for assisting decision making in practice.  

 

Before her position at Manchester, Dawn was Professor of Nursing at Columbia University School of Nursing and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (which is the largest not-for-profit home care agency in the USA). Additional past appointments include Professor of Applied Health Research, University of Leeds UK and a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice from 2009-2010, working at Kaiser Permanente, Oakland CA. Dawn is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Irvin Balagosa

Irvin Balagosa

Irvin is an experienced registered nurse in the Philippines and United Kingdom. He has worked in the field of community health, acute medicine and clinical research for uro-oncology and stroke. Aside from his clinical background he is knowledgeable in Python Programming, Web Development, and Graphic Design. He is a current member of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, an NHSmail Digital Hero and a cohort member of NHS’ Leadership’s Stepping Up Programme.

His work experience includes being a former Chief Health Information Management Officer of a large international network of hospitals where he implemented numerous clinical information systems. Most recently he was one of the Digital Medicines Nurses for a large NHS Trust that led the transformation from Paper Drug Charts to using an Electronic Prescribing and Medication Administration Solution. 

He currently works as Clinical Informatics Support Specialist for a private hospital in London.

He is passionate about Health IT and how it influences staff productivity, patient safety and ultimately improve patient outcomes. 

Claire Buchner

Claire Buchner

Regional Chief Clinical Information Officer (Nursing),  Public Health Agency

Having qualified from University of Ulster in 1991, Claire has held a variety of clinical, research and project management positions during which time she completed a MSc in Health Informatics with the University of Central Lancashire.  Since 2002 Claire taught within the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queens University Belfast.  In March 2013 Claire took up her current post.  In this post Claire works as part of the Public Health Agency Nursing team and the Health and Social Care Board eHealth Directorate to support and promote the sustainable regional development of informatics and eHealth and take a lead in the application of information technologies in support of patient care and the nursing profession.  

Claire believes that those who deliver care are best placed to make improvements and drive innovation in that care. In Northern Ireland, nurses and midwives are at the forefront of service re-design, pushing the boundaries and challenging traditional practices especially in the use of ICT.  She is passionate about the possibilities for technology to enhance practice and to support innovation in the development of patient led services now and into the future

Andrew Garbara

Andrew Garaba

Andrew is Business Continuity and Projects Manager for Home Group, a Housing Association. He is also a Mental Health Nurse with more than 14 years’ experience working in various care settings including inpatient Forensic Mental Health Nursing and Community Mental Health Nursing. He is a proud alumni of Edinburgh Napier University and Sunderland University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Mental Health Nursing degree and post graduate MSc in Health Informatics respectively. He also holds a PRINCE 2 Practitioner Certification.

He is passionate about digital nursing and how this improves nursing and patient outcomes. He feels his varied experience, especially his current role as a Business Continuity and Projects Manager adds value to the Digital Nursing Committee in ensuring that Digital Nursing Applications being developed and used are resilient enough to weather the impact of a disruption for example IT failure, data breach, cyber or ransomware attack. The impact of this disruption threatens patient safety and Andrew feels nurses need to be involved both in the development these applications and in the business continuity planning to come up with robust plans to continue delivering predefined acceptable levels of safe and quality care before, during and after these disruptions.   

Andrew feels his mental health background, will also add value to the Digital Nursing Committee by making sure mental health nursing doesn’t lag behind digitalisation in other branches of nursing. 

Lastly, he looks forward to work with nurses on the frontline and other colleagues from other disciplines in health and social care to make a difference through digital nursing. 

 
Fiona Mills

Fiona Mills

Fiona is an experienced Paediatric Nurse who began her digital nursing career in 2013 when clinically supporting the electronic medications administration and prescribing roll out at the Children's Hospital in Oxford. In 2017 Fiona became one of the first Nursing Informatics leads at Oxford University Hospitals as a permanent role. Since 2019 Fiona has been working as a Senior Divisional Nurse Informatics lead at Oxford university Hospitals, leading on digital processes and strategies across two divisions in the organisation.

Fiona is passionate about Digital Nursing as a speciality, actively supporting the development of Nursing colleagues to enhance and develop digital skills within the clinical health care setting and ensuring that patient safety is at the centre of everything we do. Essential to this is user centred, evidence-based design of digital systems which is a significant part of Fiona's remit in her current role.

Another aspect of Fiona's role is to support all clinical colleagues with digital aspects of healthcare, therefore she is involved in education and training for Nursing colleagues across the Organisation, not only looking at Electronic Patient record systems, but facilitating development of digital literacy for all colleagues which is an essential skillset for Nursing in digital health care settings. 

Fiona has been actively involved in numerous successful digital projects at Oxford university Hospitals, is a member of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics and currently chairs the Paediatric Specialist interest group, bringing together digital paediatric clinicians using the Oracle (Cerner) platform to learn and share best practice. 

Sam Neville

Sam Neville

Sam is Chief Nursing Informatics Officer of the Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust. Sam started nurse training in 1992 at Orsett School of Nursing. In 2006 she completed a Certificate in Management Studies and followed this with a Masters in Leadership and Personal Development at Anglia Ruskin University in 2011. She has worked as a staff nurse within surgery, and followed the career path through to matron within different specialities, as well as a stint in risk management. Sam was previously Essex branch chair for approximately five years and remains an active steward within Essex since about 2004. She is also a member of the eHealth Forum Steering Committee.

Page last updated - 29/10/2023