Inclusion, Involvement & Responsible Practices

The Hub Governance team is led by Hub directors Abigail Durrant and Naeem Soomro, and includes representatives from our partnership, across sectors, that offer strategic expertise and insight to ensure we strive for best practice in all of our hub work.

The team includes experts in:

Voluntary Sector involvement in hub activities;
Regulatory, policy and ethical matters;
Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE);
Health data analytics and technical implementation for improving health outcomes.

The mission of NortHFutures is to humanise health-tech and consider how tools and services for health and care need to be designed to be useful and useable by all.

Part of the Hub Governance work is to establish and review processes, advisory groups and forums for considering how best to involve diverse stakeholders in the hub activities, including patients, citizens, and community members.

We have set up a NortHFutures ‘Research Involvement Advisory Group’ with members who are experts in participation and inclusion from our partner network. We have also set up a Patient Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) group, with patient representatives and members of the public who can advise on research and technology design studies as experts in their lived experience.

The Hub Governance team also provides guidelines, terms of engagement and put contracts in place to make sure that hub activities are legal, ethical, and operate within regulatory frameworks including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is of critical importance that any person involved in the hub programme can engage safely and meaningfully, and that research data and other information collected through hub activities is handled responsibly.

This team also supports the monitoring and evaluation of hub activities to support learning and improving the work of the hub, and considering how to sustain it into the future.

This is being led by Hub Director Abigail Durrant (Newcastle University), and Co-Director Naeem Soomro (Newcastle University, and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust).

It is supported by: Greta Brunskill (VONNE), Peter Glick (Newcastle University), Lynne Corner (Newcastle University), Alex Mitchell (NICA), Andrew Simms (Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), Lisa Taylor (VONNE), Clare Lendrem (NIHR), Arne Wolters (NIHR), and Jennifer Wood (Newcastle University).