General Sir Patrick Sanders KCB CBE DSO ADC Gen

Chief of the General Staff

Born in Tidworth Garrison military hospital and raised in Norway, Gibraltar and Iraq, General Sir Patrick Sanders was commissioned in 1986 and spent his early service as an Infantry Officer in The Royal Green Jackets in Germany, Norway and the UK. He has commanded on operations in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

His staff appointments have been in operational and strategic roles. He has been a member of the Directing Staff at the Joint Staff College, Pol/Mil adviser for the Commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq in 2003-4, Colonel Army Strategy, Chief of Defence Staff’s Liaison Officer to the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operations) in the MOD.

His higher command appointments were 20 Armoured Brigade, the 3rd (UK) Division and the Field Army.  He was promoted to General in May 2019 and commanded UK Strategic Command until May 2022. He became Chief of the General Staff in June 2022.

He is Colonel Commandant of The Honourable Artillery Company, Honorary Colonel of the Turks and Caicos Islands Regiment and President of the Armed Forces Winter Sports Association. He speaks French and Norwegian, colloquial Spanish and can tell when he is being insulted in Arabic, Pashtun, Dari, Albanian and Serbo-Croat. Married to Fiona Bullen, a successful author, they have made their home in a small Wiltshire village. General Sanders enjoys cycling, all forms of skiing, shooting and whisky. A season ticket holder with their son Kit, he is a martyr to Tottenham Hotspur FC.  He dislikes scotch eggs and can’t bear Arsenal.

Major General Tim Hodgetts CB CBE KHS DL OStJ PhD MMEd MBA MBBS CMgr FRCP FRCSEd FRCEM FIMCRCSEd FRGS

United Kingdom Surgeon General and Chair, Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services in NATO (COMEDS

Tim was commissioned in 1983 and trained at Westminster Medical School, qualifying with distinction in 1986. He holds fellowships with the Royal College of Physicians of London, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Pre-hospital Care, Institute of Healthcare Managers, and the Royal Geographical Society. He has a PhD in Public Health (‘A revolutionary approach to improving combat casualty care’); Master’s degrees in Medical Education and Business Administration; and is a Chartered Manager. He graduated from Joint Command & Staff College (psc[j]) in 2011 and the Royal College of Defence Studies in 2018.

Tim’s professional career began as a general physician in the British Military Hospital in Hannover, progressing to higher training in emergency medicine in Manchester and Sydney. He became Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Frimley Park Hospital from 1995, transferring to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in 2001 on its inception, where he served until 2010. He was first appointed a Professor in 1998 at the European Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, then at the University of Birmingham (2001), and at City University of London (2013). He was the inaugural Defence Professor with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, and Penman Foundation Professor of Surgery in South Africa for 2011.

Within Defence Tim has been responsible for nurturing the specialty of emergency medicine from infancy to maturity. He has implemented concept, doctrine, equipment and practice changes to transform the early management of combat injury and led major trauma governance from 1997-2010. Clinical leadership appointments have included Defence Consultant Adviser in EM (1997-2008); and Assistant Director Clinical Services at RCDM (2001-2007). He has served on operations in hospitals in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Oman, Afghanistan (3 tours), Kuwait and Iraq (4 tours). On 6 of these tours he was the hospital’s Medical Director, including the multinational Danish-UK-US hospital in Afghanistan, 2009. From 2011-13 he was Medical Director within NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps; and from 2014-17 he was Medical Director for the Defence Medical Services. From 2018 until assuming his role as Surgeon General he has was the Army’s Senior Health Advisor, the Head of the Army Medical Services and a Commissioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Tim has published extensively (books & journal articles) and regularly lectures internationally as a keynote speaker on leadership, innovation at pace, disaster medicine and combat casualty care. He is co-author of Major Incident Medical Management and Support; Battlefield Casualty Drills; Army Team Medic; Battlefield Advanced Trauma Life Support; and Clinical Guidelines for Operations. He co-founded the citizenAID® charity from 2017, designing a free multi award-winning app to support the public during a terrorist attack and inventing a new device (the Tourni-Key™) for the public to treat life-threatening limb bleeding.

 Tim was made Officer of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in 1999 and Commander of the British Empire in 2009; he received the Danish Defence Medal for Meritorious Service in 2010. He was Queen’s Honorary Physician from 2004 to 2010 and became Queen’s Honorary Surgeon in 2018. In 2010 he received the Defence Scientific Adviser’s Commendation for contribution to research and has been awarded 18 academic medals, including the prestigious Mitchiner Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. His academic department was twice recognised nationally as the “Training Team of the Year” and in 2006 he was honoured with the personal accolade of Hospital Doctor of the Year throughout the NHS. He was named in a British Medical Association dossier as one of the most innovative doctors in the country.

Brigadier Antony Peter Finn MA MRCGP DRCOG DFFP

Head Army Healthcare

Brigadier Tony Finn was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps as a Professional Qualified Officer in 1998.  His first assignment was to Northern Ireland as Regimental Medical Officer for 3 Royal Irish and, by appointment, Senior Medical Officer to Headquarters 3 Infantry Brigade.  In this role, he worked closely with the civilian emergency services on medical support to the Drumcree marching seasons and first developed his interest in integrated healthcare systems.

He qualified as a General Practitioner in summer 2003, where upon he was promoted to Major, and deployed to Afghanistan as Senior Medical Officer for Operation FINGAL.  After a short period as Deputy Senior Medical Officer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he attended the Initial Command & Staff Course (Land) in 2004. 

Returning to Camberley he joined the Army Medical Directorate as SO2 Force Development in 2005 before moving to Command B (4) Medical Squadron in 2007.  In a busy two years he deployed to Afghanistan for the second time, Kenya and then Iraq.  He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and attended the Advanced Command and Staff Course in September 2009.  Thereafter, he assumed Command of 1 Armoured Medical Regiment and deployed to Afghanistan again, this time as Commanding Officer of the Operation HERRICK 15 Close Support Medical Regiment. 

Promoted to Colonel in 2012, he returned to the Army Medical Directorate as Assistant Director of Medical Operational Capability.  During this time he was Programme Manager for the Operational Patient Care 2025 programme and led on the development of a Joint concept for integrated Pre-Hospital Care.  He refined this integrated concept during his time as Deputy Commander (Medical) for 101 Logistic Brigade and, as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff (Medical) for the Field Army, he commenced the implementation of the integrated Pre-Hospital Care system across the Army.

He was promoted to Brigadier in March 2019 where he then assumed the appointment of Commander of 2nd Medical Brigade, where he was responsible for extending the Integrated Healthcare System and deployed hospital care. Since July 2021 he has been the Senior Health Advisor (Army).

He enjoys hill walking and most sports, particularly Rugby and Skiing; he is married to Claire, has two teenage sons (Ryan and Charles) and two energetic Hungarian Vizslas (Otto and Lily).

Professor Mihaela van der Schaar PhD is now unable to join us. This keynote will be given by her colleague, Dr Fergus Imrie.

Dr Fergus Imrie, UCLA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is currently focusing on the development of new methods in machine learning and artificial intelligence for medicine and healthcare. This includes new methodologies in explainable AI, feature selection, and treatment effect estimation, as well as methods for early diagnosis and screening.

Mihaela van der Schaar is the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Medicine at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute in London. In addition to leading the van der Schaar Lab, Mihaela is founder and director of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine (CCAIM). Mihaela is personally credited as inventor on 35 USA patents, many of which are still frequently cited and adopted in standards. She has made over 45 contributions to international standards for which she received 3 ISO Awards. In 2019, a Nesta report determined that Mihaela was the most-cited female AI researcher in the U.K. Mihaela has published more than 600 papers, including 280 journal articles and over 300 conference papers. She has also authored several books and book chapters.

Professor Andrew Jones PhD DSci

Andrew M Jones is Professor of Applied Physiology at the University of Exeter, UK. Prof Jones is internationally recognized for his expertise in the following areas: 1) control of, and limitations to, human skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism; 2) causes of exercise intolerance in health and disease; 3) respiratory physiology, particularly the kinetics of pulmonary gas exchange during exercise; and 4) sports performance physiology and nutrition. Prof Jones has published >350 peer-reviewed scientific articles with >38K citations, h-index of 107 and i10 of 305 (Google Scholar). Jones is Editor-in-Chief of the ACSM’s flagship journal, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise and a member of the editorial boards of several other leading journals in the exercise sciences. Prof Jones has a keen interest in the translation of sports science research to aid elite sports performance and he has served as a consultant to UK Athletics, the English Institute of Sport and Nike Inc.

Captain Preet Chandi

Captain Preet Chandi joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 2008 as a Combat Medical Technician, she commissioned into the Army Reserves in 2012 and joined the Regular Army in 2016. She is currently serving as a physiotherapist and has completed large scale exercises/deployments in Nepal, Kenya and South Sudan. She completed her Sports and Exercises Medicine MSc in Oct 2021.

In 2022, Preet became the ninth woman in history to ski solo to the South Pole and the first woman of colour to complete a solo expedition on the continent. In 2023, Preet set out on her next adventure, during which, she broke two Guinness world records for the longest solo unsupported one-way ski expedition by a woman and overall. As part of the endeavour, she covered 922 miles in 70 days.

In 2022, she completed more than four months of school talks in 2022 all over the UK, reaching more than 18,000 students. That same year, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

She won the ‘Inspirational’ and ‘Woman of the Year’ awards at the inaugural Women in Defence event in October 2022 and received an honorary masters at Derby University in 2022.

Ben Goldacre is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, doctor, academic and campaigner who specialises in unpicking scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, government reports, pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks. He trained in medicine at Oxford and UCL, in psychiatry at the Maudsley, and in epidemiology at LSHTM. He is currently Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Director of the Evidence-Based Medicine DataLab and Chair of the HealthTech Advisory Board. His books have sold over 600,000 copies worldwide and have been published in 31 languages. His academic and policy work is in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, where he works on better uses of routinely collected electronic health data, variation in care, access to clinical trial data, efficient trial design, and retracted papers. He has written policy papers for the UK government, founded the AllTrials campaign, and in the 2018 Queen’s Honours received an MBE “For Services to Evidence in Policy”.