Donald M Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, is President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He is one of America’s leading authorities on health care quality and improvement. He is also clinical professor of pediatrics and health care policy at the Harvard Medical School.

Dr Berwick has served as vice chair of the US Preventive Services Task Force, the first “Independent Member” of the Board of Trustees of the American Hospital Association, and as chair on the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. An elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), Dr Berwick now serves on the IOM’s Governing Council.

Dr Berwick is the author of numerous articles and books, including Curing Health Care and Escape Fire.

Donald Berwick will speak at 09.30–10.30 on Wednesday 18 March.

Dr Günther Jonitz is President of the Ärztekammer Berlin (Berlin Chamber of Physicians) and a member of the board of the Bundesärztekammer (German Medical Association), where he is Head of the Quality Assurance Committees.

Currently employed as a surgeon at the Elisabeth Klinik Hospital in Berlin, Germany, Dr Jonitz is a founding member and board member of the Deutsches Netzwerk Evidenzbasierte Medizin (German Network for Evidence Based Medicine). He is also a founding member and vice chairman of the Aktionsbündnis Patientensicherheit (German Coalition for Patient Safety).

Dr Jonitz has been actively involved in professional politics since the beginning of the 1990s and currently is a representative and advisor to the German government on patient safety issues in international organisations. He is also a member of the board of the Berliner Medizinische Gesellschaft (Berlin Medical Society, based 1860).

Günther Jonitz will speak at 09.30–10.30 on Thursday 19 March.

Professor Trisha Greenhalgh is a general practitioner in north London and Professor of Primary Health Care at University College London, where she has worked since 1986. She also holds a Consultant post in Primary Health Care at Barnet Primary Care Trust. Her diverse research interests fall into three main categories: (a) complex innovation in healthcare, especially the introduction and assimilation of ‘networked’ electronic health records; (b) service development for chronic disease management, with a particular focus on the provision of culturally congruent services for diabetes; and (c) the use of narrative methods in health services research, especially in the realm of audit and quality improvement.

Professor Greenhalgh is Programme Director of the Masters in International Primary Health Care at UCL (which currently offers 20 free scholarships annually to students from developing countries) and of the Dick Whittington Project (which welcomes 40 academically able teenagers from socio-economically deprived backgrounds annually to a pre-medicine summer school).

She has published over 90 papers in peer reviewed journals, is the author of 7 academic textbooks, and was awarded the OBE for Services to Medicine in 2001.

Trisha Greenhalgh will speak at 08.45–09.30 on Friday 20 March.

Dr Ross McL Wilson is Chairman of the International Forum’s Strategic Advisory Board. He is also a Director of the Centre for Healthcare Improvement at Northern Sydney Central Coast Health in Australia, and was an Executive Member (2001-2006) of the Australian Council for the Safety and Quality of Health Care. As such he has had roles at policy, strategic and operational levels in the improvement of health care quality and safety. He was the inaugural Chair of the NSW Ministerial Advisory Committee for Quality in Health Care (1996-2002) and led the Quality in Australian Health Care Study (1993-1995). Current activities include leading the Clinical Practice Improvement education programme for clinical leaders and ongoing development of measurement tools in patient safety. International collaboration continues on the epidemiology of adverse events.

Dr Wilson is a member of the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety Expert Advisory Group, and is leading a Patient Safety Research working group in developing countries, with a current project in seven African countries.

Until recently, Dr Wilson had a clinical role as Senior Specialist in Intensive Care Medicine at Royal North Shore Hospital, a teaching hospital of the University of Sydney, Australia.

Ross McL Wilson will speak at 15.30–16.30 on Friday 20 March.