Meet our Digital Pharmacy Expert Advisory Group
Darren Powell (Chair)
Contact DPEAG
[email protected]
Darren Powell (Chair)
In his role as a clinical lead for NHS Digital, Darren is involved in the delivery of technologies at a national scale. He is the lead clinician for NHSmail, as well as a clinician on the Electronic Prescription Service; he has supported the Summary Care Record programme and is also CPPE programme guardian for the SCR training modules.
Darren intends to bring his experience, intelligence and expert opinion to help inform the group & the direction of travel of technology and digital delivery of services that impact upon pharmacy as a profession and the teams within it. He intends to use my network links (e.g. PSNC, LPCs, AIM, CPPSG, NHS Digital) to ensure that RPS has the opportunity to feed into developments at early stages to help shape programmes as well as develop its own policy to support these future developments.
As a practicing community based pharmacist he has experience of the use of technology on the frontline, and the frustrations, and needs of the pharmacy workforce. As a member of Doncaster Local Pharmaceutical Committee, he has insight to contractual frameworks and direction of travel in terms of the pharmacy contract in community. Those insights are key for the RPS to support their grassroots members as the delivery healthcare develops in a technologically assisted age.
Anna Bunch
Anna has been working in the field of digital informatics for over 20 years and has seen the development of digital in pharmacy practice over this time; she has learnt many lessons which she continues to share across the acute hospital pharmacy and wider pharmacy community.
Anna is currently the chair of the System-C, Pharmacy & EPMA Southern regional user group, which covers hospital sites from Brighton to Cornwall and South Africa. It is an active Anna has been working in the field of digital informatics for over 20 years and has seen the development of digital in pharmacy practice over this time; she has learnt many lessons which she continues to share across the acute hospital pharmacy and wider pharmacy community.
Anna is currently the chair of the System-C, Pharmacy & EPMA Southern regional user group, which covers hospital sites from Brighton to Cornwall and South Africa. It is an active community which has grown under her term as Chair; bi-yearly meetings have increased to every 2-3 months and the networking and learning has exceeded expectations.
As a member of the DPEAG, she would share her experience and learning with this wider group, to provide a wider voice to RPS Digital.
Anna is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Leading Practitioner of Federation for Informatics Professionals (FEDIP). A priority for Anna would be the alignment of educational developments supported by the RPS for digital pharmacy professionals and the FEDIP clinical informatic competencies.
Locally, Anna working on several projects across the LCS, including innovative inter-operability between systems internally to hospitals and hospital medication records across acute and primary care.
Anna is keen to share her experience and to support others on their development journey and to be an advocate for pharmacy in all digital pharmacy developments.
Angela Burgin
Angela is currently a NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bradford and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. She is a registered independent pharmacist prescriber with 25 years of hospital clinical pharmacy experience. Alongside her clinical work, Angela has an extensive portfolio comprising education and training, leadership roles, and in the last 10 years, expertise in clinical informatics and digital health transformation. Prior to starting her PhD, Angela undertook a Clinical Leadership development year with NHS England as Digital Transformation Fellow exploring barriers and facilitators to digital skill development of the pharmacy workforce across an Integrated Care System.
Angela’s research is interested in the impact of electronic prescribing systems and electronic patient records on staff working practices, specifically focussing on communication about medicines with patients and the wider healthcare team. Through her work, Angela has developed a passion for patient involvement in their care, and in the design and delivery of pharmacy research and healthcare service improvement.
Angela is dedicated to, and enthusiastic about, enabling staff to deliver personalised care with technology. She continues to develop and combine her research skills and expertise, with the area of digital transformation and medicines optimisation, as
she strives to improve patient services and outcomes, and the working lives of staff.
Sibby Buckle
English Pharmacy Board member
Current occupation: Pharmacy Manager, Boots, Nottingham
Academic qualifications: BSc (Hons) in Pharmacy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Professional awards: FRPharmS and nominated for the 'women of the year' lunch (1999).
Professional experience and particular interests: Sibby moved through Boots store management and retail marketing in Kent and London into buying and marketing at Boots HQ in Nottingham, then into pharmacy PR and corporate affairs. In the mid 1990's she was a founder member of CPAG (Community Pharmacy Action Group).
Responsible for professional relations and PR for BHI, she worked in the international division before becoming Head of Corporate Affairs for Crookes Healthcare Ltd.
Engaged in politics, and fighting three National and two European elections, Sibby ran her own business for five years, embracing political consultancy, pharmacy locums, QC and tutoring at Nottingham University.
Returning to frontline pharmacy, Sibby has been actively involved in the introduction and development of new medicines services.
She is also involved with two charities, Emmanuel Press in South Africa, working to improve understanding of HIV/Aids, and the Arches charity in Nottingham, helping the homeless, ex offenders and asylum seekers.
Other interests/hobbies: Politics, travel, skiing, theatre, fine dining and social action.
Liam Bastian
Liam has been working in the digital medicines space for many years and is currently serving as Chief Pharmacy Information Officer at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, providing digital strategy and advancement to services across the county in all sectors.
Whilst a member of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, Liam worked on highlighting and strengthening the vital role of pharmacy professionals in the digital space. He contributed to both the Building successful Clinical Informatics teams and Professional Accreditation for Clinical Informaticians reports produced by the Faculty.
Liam also has a keen interest in research and education, winning an award at the 2023 RPS national conference for research into the issues communicated by pharmacists using the DMS service across care interfaces. He’s subsequently completed an MSc in Health Informatics, developing a computer simulation of a hospital dispensary to identify the most efficient targets for automation. He also sits on the steering group for the South West Digital Health and Care Skills Development network.
Liam’s ambitions as a member of the DPEAG are to use his experience, networks and skills to champion advancements in digital pharmacy as well as ensure that foundational digital skills take a high priority in education curricula and advanced pathways for digital professionals are developed and maintained.
Rachael Clarke
Working with established providers, health tech start-ups and organisations seeking to enter or expand in the health sector, digital health has been central to Rachael’s career as a Pharmacist and Lawyer, over the last 20 years.
Rachael brings experience in developing health apps, care home products, PMR systems, health stations, medical devices and alternative operating models incorporating automation, interoperability and AI driven systems in the UK and across Europe, Australia and the US.
Currently the Compliance Director at a leading online health provider, Rachael also sits on the Exec Board of the Pharmacy Law and Ethics Association and is Professional Editor of the British Journal of Professional Regulatory Law.
Rachael is passionate about bridging the gap between industry partners and healthcare professionals and is excited to be working with the RPS to foster an environment where best practices and innovative solutions can be shared for the benefit of all.
Penny Daynes
Penny Daynes is the Lead Pharmacist for Operations, Medicines Management and Procurement at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust. She has been involved in pharmacy digital systems since 2007 when she helped implement e-prescribing for chemotherapy as an oncology pharmacist.
Penny has also led the ePMA workstream for a large EPR Project across a neighbouring trust (Bradford) and is working on pharmacy automation projects, e-CD registers, integration and optimisation projects. She is currently studying as a member of the NHS Digital Academy cohort 3 and learning lots about digital transformation.
Penny is very enthusiastic about the adoption of digital systems within pharmacy to improve workflows and medicines safety and also keen to help upskill pharmacy staff.
Penny is looking forward to serving on the Digital Pharmacy Expert Advisory Group and to helping to move the pharmacy digital agenda forward.
Dipak Duggal
Dipak is an accomplished former NHS Director of pharmacy, a hospital executive director and senior management consultant.
He is also experienced in innovative managed services and, currently, directs a global healthcare technology medical affairs division having previously led the solutions and marketing division delivering strategic, impactful change and economic value.
Previously, Dipak was a hospital clinical and operational director, in acute, complex provider and payor hospital environments, accountable for service delivery, medication management and error optimization, national patient flow targets, quality and financial performance at several exemplar organisations.
Esther Gathogo
Esther has 18 years’ broad experience working in different sectors in health and care including academia, hospital, primary care, clinical commissioning and digital informatics. Esther holds a doctorate from King’s College London and has a wealth of experience in building digital, data insight and business intelligence solutions for the benefits of patients and healthcare professionals in the NHS.
At present, Esther works as a Clinical Lead in Population Health Management (PHM) at Cerner Corporation. Cerner is a global digital healthcare company that offers a broad range of health and care products to support and enable integrating health and care systems to deliver smarter, value-based care, better outcomes, and proactively manage and improve the wellbeing of their populations. In the UK, Cerner Millennium Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform is utilised by 144,000+ health and care professionals across 24 NHS Trusts to manage 1.5 million patients every month. Cerner was the first to have patient electronic healthcare record on the Apple health platform. Furthermore, London-wide connectivity, enabled by Cerner’s Health Information Exchange (HIE), allows seamless sharing of patient information locally, and then across London’s other acute Trusts via the One London Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE).
Esther’s primary role is in digitising clinical pathways across health systems and within an organisation. This offers a longitudinal record for the patient and end-to-end patient care from diagnosis, management and on-going care. Since Esther joined the team 3 years ago, the team has developed 28 digital clinical pathways at an NHS Acute Care Collaborative Vanguard organisation and was shortlisted for the HSJ Partnership awards and contributed to NHS Digital Exemplar Site – Chase Farm, the first NHS digitised hospital. During the COVID19 pandemic, Esther worked on projects to aid the city’s response to the pandemic including provision of electronic health records (EHR) platform to the temporary hospital at London Excel – the Nightingale Hospital. More recently, Esther has been working on PHM led Medicines Optimisation Framework working with PCN pharmacists, health inequalities and data science projects on the development of local population predictive modelling using machine learning/artificial intelligence. These projects have brought clinical, operational and financial value to the patients, healthcare professionals, organisations involved and the population they serve.
Esther is a healthcare innovator and digital health advocate. She is a current NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow, the largest entrepreneurial workforce development programme that aims to provide the commercial skills, knowledge and experience needed to successfully develop and spread innovative solutions to the challenges facing the NHS for the benefits of patients, staff and the wider NHS.
Esther is keen to share her knowledge and experience with this wider group and to support others on their development journey and to be an advocate for pharmacy in all digital pharmacy developments.
Stephen Goundrey-Smith
SGS PharmaSolutions
Stephen Goundrey-Smith is a pharmacist, specialising in pharmacy informatics, digital practice and medicines system safety. He has worked in the field of electronic prescribing, medicines and healthcare for over 20 years.
Stephen qualified as a pharmacist in 1989, and has worked variously in hospital and community pharmacy, in the pharmaceutical industry and as a prescribing and pharmacy software analyst in the healthcare IT industry. He has a MSc in Information Science, and a PhD in Medical Ethics.
He is the author of two books on pharmacy IT - Principles of Electronic Prescribing (2008), IT in Pharmacy: An Integrated Approach (2012), as well as two books on ethics of biomedical innovation. He has published widely and is a regular conference speaker in both pharmacy informatics and medical ethics.
Alistair Gray
Alistair has been qualified for over thirty years and has extensive experience of both the community and hospital side of the profession. He has seen how technology has changed and shaped the profession during this time, and he has influenced the direction and development of some of that technology.
Over the last 12 years, Alistair has led the development of a digital Medicines Reconciliation and workload tracker, within his NHS Trust, which doubles as a pharmaceutical care planning tool. He is the innovator of the Refer-to-Pharmacy hospital to community pharmacy electronic referral application which has been live in Pennine Lancashire since 2015.
Alistair is currently leading a project with the Lancashire & South Cumbria ICS called the Unified Medicines Record with Referrals; this will create a consolidated, persisted record of prescribing from numerous sources to make it easy for health professionals to determine a person’s best possible medicines history at the point of need. Shortly he’ll be introducing a mobile app (Blippit Meds) into his Trust which will help nurses find the right information about injectable medicines; it will also contain a tool and calculator to support prescribers around Fluid Stewardship.
Alistair is a natural innovator/gamechanger and articulator of how he wants to make it easy for pharmacy and other health professionals, to do an effective job, by using digital technology and data which is there are the point of need and easily interpretable.
Harriet Launders
Harriet has 26 years of experience as a clinical pharmacist during this time she has been championing, implementing and using IT solutions in a range of healthcare settings. Her experience is enabling her to anticipate, recognise and then overcome challenges with digital systems, particularly when data cannot pass between systems. Her experience includes chemotherapy prescribing and preparation systems; electronic prescribing; pharmacy stock control; patient record systems; patient safety reporting systems; booking and data recording systems; national databases for example vaccination records; national benchmarking tools and programmes used as tools for audit.
Harriet is currently a lead anti-infectives pharmacist working in a teaching hospital and community services. She has an interest in adopting digital solutions to improve patient safety and facilitate antimicrobial stewardship. She has a particular interest in penicillin allergy de-labelling.
Harriet also serves as a pharmacist in the army reserves providing a wider perspective on risks and benefits of IT in different healthcare delivery settings.
Harriet is looking forward to advocating for users of digital systems on the Digital Pharmacy Expert Advisory Group and helping to move the pharmacy digital agenda forward.
Yasmin Karsan
Yasmin Karsan is a prescribing pharmacist with over 10 years of experience in the field. She holds a PhD in community pharmacy and health systems and has worked in a variety of settings, including retail pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, and research.
Throughout her career, Yasmin has been passionate about leveraging technology to improve patient outcomes. In pursuit of this goal, Yasmin obtained a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence, which has allowed her to bring a unique perspective to her work as a pharmacist.
In addition to her work as a pharmacist and AI specialist, Yasmin is a qualified clinical safety officer supporting health tech companies with their digital clinical safety and medical device compliance and regulatory support.
Amna Khan-Patel
Amna Khan-Patel is currently a Clinical Fellow at NHS England in the Digital Medicines Programme following the completion of the having Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s Clinical Fellowship (2023/2024). Prior to this role, Amna has worked in secondary care for over a decade. Her MSc in Secondary research focused on a quality improvement project that applied the PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) methodology to support the production and implementation of an electronic pharmacy handover. This project aimed to enhance the communication of patient information within the pharmacy team, ultimately improving the efficiency and safety of patient care.
During her fellowship Amna led the national project aimed at exploring the adoption and implementation of closed-loop medicines management across the NHS. This work involved reviewing the benefits and challenges faced by healthcare organisations that have adopted these systems, with a focus on optimising medication safety and ensuring efficient workflows within pharmacy and healthcare settings.
Prior to her current role, she was the Education and Training Lead and is keen to support the development of pharmacy workforce in digital skills and competencies to improve the way patient services are delivered.
She is passionate about the ongoing development of the pharmacy workforce and is committed to advancing digital literacy in the sector, ensuring that technology enhances both
the quality of care and patient outcomes.
Amna is looking forward to joining the Digital Expert Advisory Group to advocate for innovative solutions that bridge the gap between digital transformation and patient care.
Sean MacBride-Stewart
Sean is a Senior Pharmacist in the Pharmacy Service, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. His responsibilities include the development and implementation of education, prescribing indicators and written materials/digital tools used in the implementation of prescribing strategies by pharmacy teams.
His main areas of interest are patient safety, quality indicators, digital prescribing processes, digital tools for clinical audit or improvement projects, drug utilisation research, quality improvement evaluation, mental health service, prison and police custody healthcare, independent prescriber training, leadership, team development and the ecological impact of medicines use.
His past experiences include community pharmacy, pharmaceutical sales and marketing, academic detailing, formulary management and practice pharmacy.
Sean is chair of the Prescription Data, Information, Intelligence and Systems Group (Scottish Pharmacy Practice and Prescribing Advisers Association) and the GP IT Systems Prescribing Advisory Board (NHS National Services Scotland Information Technology Strategic Business Unit). He is an expert member of the West of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 4 (REC4), a committee member of European Drug Utilisation Research Group (EuroDURG) and a committee member of Prescribing Research in Medicines Management UK & Ireland (PRIMM).
Cath O’Brien
Cath was appointed as Chief Pharmacy Information Officer for DHCW in 2024 where she is engaged with the delivery of the current digital medicines initiatives as well as helping shape the next steps in achieving the digital medicines roadmap for NHS Wales.
Historically, Cath has held a number of senior pharmacy roles at WCPPE and RPSGB; taking a leadership role in establishing RPS. She has now returned to a pharmacy role following a decade as Director of the Welsh Blood Service and Chief Operating Officer at Velindre NHS University Trust.
Her digital experience ranges from e-learning platforms to major system implementations in Blood, LIMS, Cancer Informatics and Radiotherapy.
She was made Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the Welsh Blood Service and the adoption of Cell and Gene Therapy in Wales for leading the development of the Advanced Therapies Statement of Intent on behalf of Welsh Government.
She has extensive experience in service transformation and a particular interest in innovation in the life science sector; having been a Board member of the Life Science Hub Wales.