Our Steering Group comprises both experts and advocates from across the digital health industry. They are quintessential in advising, guiding and supporting the research and events conducted by the FoDH.
Find out more about our staff partners below. If you would like to hear more or get involved with the faculty’s work, please get in touch by filling out a contact form.
Dr Rajiv Sethi
Rajiv is a passionate advocate of interdisciplinary collaboration to improve patient outcomes across health systems. He was determined to ensure that advances in the digital sphere were being harnessed for the improvement of healthcare and health education. In keeping with this vision, he established the Faculty of Digital Health with Professor Ahmed and fellow steering group members.
Prior to this, as a clinical medical student Rajiv worked with the Dean of Medical Education on the new medical curriculum ‘2020’ at King’s College London as part of his SSC project. His work on the final year curriculum design, assessment structure and preparation for practice (transition from medical student to foundation doctor/ intern) theme was recognised by the award of the Sir John Ellis prize, a national prize conferred by the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) in Edinburgh.
Rajiv’s work on ‘online collaboration in developing new curricula’ was acknowledged with distinction at Stanford Medicine X 2015, the largest medical technology conference in the World, held at Stanford University, California, USA. These experiences spurred him on to get involved in the Digital, Education and Innovation space that was growing in the UK and globally through Hack Days and Social Media movements. In March 2016, he founded the World’s first Global Grand Round #ICGR1 which was held in the Gordon Museum by International Collaborative Grand Rounds (ICGRx), a ground breaking open access initiative to connect patients, students, trainees, clinicians, public and stakeholders to collaborate and curate important health conversations.
Since, Rajiv worked with the Global Health Exchange at Health Education England to complete his MBA major project on the impact of global learning on student competencies. Following completion of this work, he was appointed Honorary Research Fellow, Global Health, Health Education England in order to further develop the undergraduate work stream. In early 2017, Rajiv was invited to join the programme development team for a new medical school in the UK. Alongside his interests in education and technology, he is also a Telluride Alumni having been selected as the only non – US Telluride Scholar at the Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety (Napa, California, Class of 2015 ).
During Summer 2017, Rajiv was appointed as a Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow at NHS England, building on his work at Sethi Health. The Sethi Health team work with students, patients, professionals and the public to improve healthcare and health education globally.
You can follow Rajiv on twitter at @therajivsethi
Professor Shafi Ahmed
Shafi Ahmed is a surgeon, teacher, futurist, innovator, entrepreneur and an evangelist in augmented and virtual reality. Shafi has been working on new technologies enhancing surgical education globally. His online videos have been watched hundreds of thousands of times, earning him the accolade of most-watched surgeon in human history. He is the Associate Dean and Head of Surgery at Barts Medical School, Queen Mary University of London.
In May 2014, using Google Glass, he performed and streamed a live interactive operation to 14000 students and trainees across 132 countries and 1100 cities. He is the cofounder of Medical Realities, a group offering surgical training products, specialising in virtual reality, augmented reality and serious games. On 14 April 2016, in collaboration with Barts Health, Medical Realities and Mativision, he performed the world’s first virtual reality operation recorded and streamed live in 360 degrees. This was viewed by 55000 people in 140 countries and 4000 cities and reached 4.6 million people on Twitter. This event was covered worldwide on over 400 newspaper/online articles and BBC Click, Sky News, ARD German, TRT News,South American NTN, ABC News, Aljazeera, and Press TV. His work has been featured on Wired, The Guardian, The Telegraph, ABC News, CNET, Verge, Huffington Post and Tech China.
On 9 December 2016, he performed the world’s first live operation using Snapchat Spectacles where he trained 200 medical students and surgical trainees, which was covered by Time magazine, BBC, and Cosmopolitan. The operation has been viewed over 100 000 times!
Shafi co-founded the Faculty of Digital Health with Rajiv and steering group members following their work on the novel Barts X Medicine programme piloted at Queen Mary University of London. They aim to create professional standards for Digital health education and training, to allow research, collaboration and innovation to grow within health systems globally.
You can follow Shafi on twitter at @shafiahmed5
Alexander Deighton
Alex Deighton is a 4th year medical student and BSc Biomedical Sciences graduate at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. With a keen interest in mHealth and clinical AI, Alex has been involved in a number of entrepreneurial programmess such as Stanford Rebuild, as well as taking an active role in both Faculty and University Digital Health research.
Having been with the Faculty of Digital Health since March 2020, Alex is keen to expand digital health education in the undergraduate curriculum, as well as encourage innovation and mentoring at both ends of the digital health spectrum.
You can follow Alex on twitter at @AlexJDeighton
Elizabeth PV Le