Dr Aoife Fordham
Aoife Fordham is a GP trainee in the Kent Surrey Sussex Deanery. She has a keen interest in clinical informatics, digital transformation and medical education. Aoife studied medicine at BSMS and holds an intercalated BSc degree in Medical Education from Barts and the London Medical School. As an undergraduate, she led module design for the medical school’s widening participation programme. During foundation training, Aoife led undergraduate OSCE teaching in addition to designing and implementing the foundation training peer mentorship programme. She was awarded the Croydon University Hospital Foundation Training award for Outstanding Contribution to the Trust, for leading a trust-wide, cross-team collaborative QIP- to improve the visibility of and referrals to the smoking cessation service.
Aoife’s most recent role as digital fellow, based within the IT department at University Hospitals Sussex, provided an invaluable opportunity to gain leadership and management experience, with emphasis on digital transformation in the acute hospital setting. During this time, she worked as the lead clinical advisor to implement a trust-wide patient health record and led a series of small-scale quality improvement projects aimed to improve data recording efficiency for clinical staff.
Her passion for travelling has taken her across the globe, recently undertaking the Value-Based Healthcare Delivery course at Harvard Business School in Boston, MA. The course provided an insight into health economics, and an exciting opportunity to collaborate with health leaders across the world, equally motivated to deliver patient-centred transformational change.
Reason for applying for the scheme
Aoife is delighted to be joining NHS Digital and the FMLM community as a National Medical Director’s Clinical Fellow. As a clinician and digital fellow, Aoife has witnessed first-hand how robust, secure IT infrastructure can positively impact the entirety of a patient’s journey and every day of NHS staff working lives. She intends to use her experience to aid in the ongoing strategic direction of projects within NHS Digital. Aoife looks forward to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the workings of NHS Digital, by embracing the opportunity to observe and work alongside senior leaders managing operation pressures and delivering policy development. She is excited to be exposed to new perspectives from health sectors, and anticipates a much fuller understanding of how organisations interact and collaborate to deliver shared strategic objectives. Aoife gratefully welcomes the personal development opportunities the fellowship offers: to embrace stepping out of her comfort zone, to challenge beliefs and practice, to explore core values and understand how these qualities shape her as a clinician, an educator and a leader.
