Maureen Bisognano

We are delighted to announce the return of Maureen Bisognano - the internationally renowned expert in quality improvement and will once again participate as plenary speakers in 2019: Maureen Bisognano previously served as IHI's President and CEO, as an innovator and leading international voice in improvement, she has changed the conversation about what it means to improve health and care, arguing that it is the patient who must be at the center of design and improvement.

Bringing patients, their families, and the dedicated health professionals who serve them, together in effective and efficient care teams is, as Maureen has seen and showed again and again, the path to better health, better care, and joy.

Dr. Henry Marsh

For the first time in the Middle East, we are thrilled to announce that our first plenary speaker is Dr. Henry Marsh – a neurosurgeon and author of the critically acclaimed memoir Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery and the sequel: Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery. It was Dr. Marsh who pioneered the practice of awake craniotomy. Although now retired from the position of senior consultant neurosurgeon at St George's Hospital in London, he continues to practise, mostly in a volunteer capacity, working in clinics in Nepal and the Ukraine.

"It is this huge central moral problem to medicine: how to find a balance between compassion and detachment. I don't like the word empathy. I think it's a word that has become very misused. I like the word compassion. As a doctor, you have to exercise rational compassion, rather than feeling." 

Rollin J. “Terry” Fairbanks, MD MS

Rollin J. “Terry” Fairbanks, MD MS is the Vice President Quality and Safety at MedStar Health, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Georgetown University, and Founding Director of the National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare. A board certified emergency physician, he practices in the MedStar Washington Hospital Center emergency department. Dr. Fairbanks also holds an academic appointment as adjunct associate professor of Industrial Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo. He earned a bachelors degree in mathematics and physics and a masters degree in industrial systems engineering/human factors engineering, and after medical school he completed specialty training in emergency medicine, the HRET/NPSF Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship, and Wharton’s Physician Leadership Certificate Program at MedStar Health.

Trained in safety science prior to entering the medical field, Dr. Fairbanks is also a former paramedic, EMS medical director, and general aviation pilot, he is known for inspiring people to think differently about healthcare’s approach to quality, safety and risk. As a member of the MedStar Health Leadership Team, he is responsible for system-wide quality and safety.

Dr. Fairbanks has contributed more than 120 publications to the healthcare quality and safety, human factors engineering and medical literature, and co-edited a book on cognitive systems engineering in healthcare. Dr. Fairbanks has served in many national and international roles, including the National Patient Safety Foundation Board of Advisors, the POLITICO Health IT Advisory Forum, AHRQ Patient Safety Network Technical Expert Advisory Panel, and he is a Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) Senior Fellow. He has served in advisory roles for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Medical Association, and has held formal consultative roles with the US, Australian, British, and Spanish governments. In 2017, he was listed by Becker’s Hospital Review in Top 50 Experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety.