Sir Muir Gray CBE (Keynote Speaker)

Muir Gray started his career at the City of Oxford Health Department in 1972, focusing on disease prevention, and developing a local, then national programme of work to promote health in old age, at a time before the implications of population ageing had been recognised. He developed a number of national initiatives, designed to prevent hospital admission and facilitate hospital discharge, publishing a report on the relationship between housing and poverty and the excess winter deaths and serving as Secretary of ASH Action on Smoking and Health He has also developed all the screening programmes in the NHS, for pregnant women, children, adults and older people and services to bring knowledge to patients and professionals including NHS Choices and the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford. During this period he was appointed as the Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS and was awarded both a CBE and later a Knighthood for services for the NHS. He set up the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and the Oxford Centre for Triple Value Healthcare and has published a series of “How To” handbooks. He is a Visiting Professor in Knowledge Management in the Nuffield Department of Surgery, and a Professor in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences where he leads work on Evidence Based Medicine and Value He set up charities to promote urban walking and an Oxford based Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and works with NHS England and Public Health England to bring about a transformation of care with the aim of increasing value for both populations and His other mission is Living Longer Better through the prevention of frailty and dementia based on the evidence that ageing by itself is not a major cause of problems till the mid-nineties, setting up the Optimal Ageing programme at Oxford and publishing a book for people aged seventy called Sod 70 ! one for the younger decade called Sod60! and a book on diet – Sod It, Eat Well!.