Tomorrow’s doctors conference 2023

Gillian Leng has had a long career in academia and public service, supporting quality improvement through the use of evidence-based guidelines and policy. As a junior doctor she was struck by variations in clinical practice and this developed into a passion for using evidence to improve care. Her career has spanned research, evidence synthesis, management, healthcare and the life sciences.

She spent over 20 years in senior roles at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, becoming only its second Chief Executive. She published a new 5 year strategy for the organisation aiming to put NICE at the forefront of evaluating new medicines, devices and diagnostics, and delivering dynamic, living guidelines.

Gillian has close knowledge of the health and care system, both as a frontline clinician and through her work to improve patient access to effective new treatments and interventions. She has worked closely with government on new policy developments, including the Office for Life Sciences, BEIS, DHSC, the Department for Education and the What Works Centres.

Gillian trained in medicine at Leeds, worked on clinical trials and epidemiological research in Edinburgh, and was a Public Health Consultant in London. She is now the Dean at the Royal Society of Medicine, on the Board of Radar Healthcare and a trustee of the Cochrane Collaboration and the Guidelines International Network. She is also a visiting professor at King’s College London and an affiliate professor at the National University of Singapore.

Professor Jag Dhanda is an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon with a subspecialty interest in head and neck oncology. His NHS practice is limited to free tissue transfer for complex head and neck reconstruction. He has been the successful recipient of three Royal College of Surgeons of England research fellowships (college, board and specialty) and a CRUK fellowship.

Professor Dhanda is an elected board member for Faculty of Dental Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons of England and also a practicing dental implant surgeon in the South East and set up the first dental postgraduate programme at BSMS in Dental Implant Reconstructive Surgery. Professor Dhanda is the Founder and Clinical Lead for Virtual Reality in Medicine and Surgery (VRiMS.net), a free for trainee resource using live streaming and restreaming of cadaveric surgical techniques in virtual reality. He is conducting studies to scientifically evaluate and validate extended reality in medical education with his research group recently hosting a metaverse event for HEE. VRiMS will soon release a VR app for basic life support and fire safety training to fundamentally change how mandatory training is delivered using extended reality.

His research group is also developing a skin cancer augmented reality app to guide surgeons in diagnosis and surgical techniques for managing facial skin cancer. Professor Dhanda regular travels to low to middle income countries to develop teaching resources using extended reality. His group raises funds to develop innovations for global surgery and donate surgical instruments to rural surgeons as well as providing training for all of the surgical specialties.  

Ms Clare Schilling is a Consultant Oral and Maxillofacial surgeon at University College Hospital London and Honorary Associate Professor of the Head and Neck Academic Centre (HNAC) in the division of surgical and interventional sciences at University College London.

She completed OMFS specialist training including a Head and Neck fellowship UK as well as a clinical research PhD in novel imaging techniques for detection of metastasis in head and neck cancer.

She holds over £1 million in research funding as Chief Investigator of NIHR funded multicentre trial, “LOOC”, for lymphatic mapping of oropharyngeal cancers. She is co-director of Headstart, the Royal College of Surgeons accredited national training program for sentinel node biopsy in oral cancer. Her research and clinical interests include fluorescence guided surgery, augmented reality surgery and quality outcome measures.

Professor Roger Kirby is a Prostate Surgeon with over 40 years’ experience in the NHS and private practice.

Graduating from Cambridge University in 1975, Roger trained at the Middlesex Hospital and was appointed Consultant Urologist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London in 1986. There he became one of the first urologists in the UK to perform open radical prostatectomy for localised prostate cancers.

In 1995 he moved to St George’s Hospital where he was appointed Professor of Urology and Director of Postgraduate Education. In the same year he was instrumental in founding two charities: Prostate Research Campaign and The British Urological Foundation, both of which have gone on to become major charitable organisations.

In 2005 he established The Prostate Centre in Wimpole Street, London, a centre of excellence outside the NHS, and was one of the first surgeons in England to use the da Vinci surgical robot for laparoscopic prostatectomy.

Professor Roger Kirby has published more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific publications, written 68 books mainly on prostate disease and men’s health, and founded two scientific journals: Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases and Trends in Urology and Men’s Health.

In 2016 he received the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons’ Clement Price Thomas Award for services to surgery.

Dr Goldie Khera is an experienced General, Laparoscopic, Emergency and Bariatric Surgeon. His surgical practice centres are around Brighton and Hove and he operates from 6 hospitals in Sussex and the South Coast. Goldie specialises in laparoscopic gall bladder, single or multiple complex recurrent hernias, adhesions, Gilmores groin/sports groin hernia, emergency/short notice surgery and Bariatric weight loss surgery.

Dr Khera has a keen interest in surgical training and education. He has numerous publications and has presented his clinical research and on behalf of ASiT both nationally and internationally. He has also been President of the largest UK surgical training organisation - the Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT 2011-2012). He has been a Consultant Benign Upper GI, General, Emergency and Trauma Surgeon at Brighton and Sussex University Teaching Hospital NHS Trust since 2012. He is also a Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and the General Surgery representative for Higher Surgical trainees at Kent Surrey and Sussex (KSS) Deanery. He operates and does consultations across the South coast of UK at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, Montefiore Hospital Hove, Nuffield Brighton (Woodingdean), Nuffield Haywards Heath as well as at the Lewes Victoria Hospital.