Meet the speakers
Prof Elvira Perez-Vallejos
Elvira, Professor of Mental Health and Technology at School of Medicine and School of Computer Science (50/50 appointment) at the University of Nottingham (UoN) Elvira’s research portfolio (>£80M) is highly interdisciplinary with funding from UKRI (AHRC EPSRC, MRC) and NIHR. She specialises in assessing the impact that technology has on the mental wellbeing of groups with protected characteristics (children, young people, older adults) applying co-design and participatory methods (e.g., Youth Juries). She is driving world-leading research on digital mental health including issues of data ethics and privacy, user and stakeholder engagement, co-production, and responsible innovation.
Laura MacDonald
Laura Macdonald is Co-founder of Carecircle, leading the team in Product Development and Partnerships. Having worked extensively in strategic development across the private, public and third sector, including a long stint at the Royal College of Physicians, Laura looks for the opportunities of greatest impact at the intersection of industry problems. Laura has had the privilege of living and working in five countries to date, including one LDC and Silicon Valley and is driven to support social equity. A seasoned NED, serving on the board of various health and education charities, she also formed a patient organisation with her parents to support sufferers and carers of those with traumatic brain injury following her brother’s own catastrophic car accident. Carecircle is the product of her and the team’s unique approach to addressing unmet patient need and tackling pervasive problems regarding data availability and the ethical use of big data. Carecircle has been assessed by the UK Government’s Life Sciences Division as a “genuine innovation” and is proudly working with the Rare Disease Implementation Group in Wales as well as numerous international bodies focused on the care and research of Rare Diseases.
Mark Goodyear
Mark Goodyear, CEO of Carecircle, is a seasoned management consultant, mediator, and expert witness with a rich background in information technology. Co-founder of Carecircle, a global health platform, he took the helm as CEO in July 2022. Goodyear has provided invaluable IT consulting services across the UK, specialized in dispute resolution within technology sectors, and supported technology due diligence and incident analysis. His career milestones include senior partnership at Accenture, where he was pivotal in technology and research from 1998 to 2001 and played a critical role in the London Stock Exchange outage analysis in 2000. Goodyear’s education includes an MA in Engineering from Queens’ College, Cambridge.
