It was great meeting up with Gareth in London recently. Despite his tight schedule with meetings lined up for the whole day, I had the opportunity to not only meet the other members of the team; but enjoyed a ‘Precious moment’ with him. Looking forward to seeing him at the Zenith Health Awards on 5th. November.
Enjoy the moment and find out why he is so passionate about people and healthcare.
Q – Hi, could you please introduce yourself?
Gareth Presch, 37 originally from Dublin, Ireland and now living just outside Carlisle, Cumbria. I’m married to Krista and we’ve 2 girls Mia (3) and Darcey (7 months) and I’m the founder of the World Health Innovation Summit.
Q – Where are you based?
I’m based just outside Carlisle, Cumbria. Our work reaches a Global audience. We’ve team members in multiple countries from Greece, Germany, Morocco etc. We make great use of technology such as skype.
Q – What is your background?
I worked in the NHS for about 16 months in Ehealth and District Nursing locally here in Cumbria and I was the Former Chief Officer of the National Haemophilia Council of Ireland. I previously had roles as the National Programme Lead for Blood Transfusion, Haemochromatosis, Estates, Primary Care, Health Promotion and have had an extensive career in business development and the charity sector came up with the idea for WHIS?
It was a case of my experiences in health and seeing the shift in many sectors towards social good in the community. The future of business will be aligned to social good. Businesses that work with communities will be supported by communities. I’ve witnessed over the last 2-3 years a huge shift in that direction. WHIS was founded on those principles and I guess if I can trace it back to one moment it was probably the Carlisle Ambassadors meeting I attended last March. I sat there and listened and seen the amazing work the local business community where doing in their community which had a direct link to improving people’s quality of life. It was that event along with a visit to Dr Amir Hannan’s surgery in Hyde, Manchester where I seen his work in the community as a GP where I thought we need a space/platform for everyone to share their knowledge so we all benefit, Hence the idea behind the World Health Innovation Summit CIC.
A platform where we can help our under pressure health services and exchange knowledge in a forum that stimulates outcomes and networks to deliver solutions for our community. We work as a team and we all reap the rewards as a community. As our motto says “Together, We Inspire”
Q – How does WHIS work?
Our Summits bring people together from a variety of sectors and that stimulates innovation like never before. When you put people into a room with different perspectives and ideas the innovation begins to flow. That creates networks that inspire positive change for all. It’s unique in that it’s never been done before. It’s a simple idea really. Health touches us all, every sector so let’s bring every sector into the room so we all can benefit. Share our ideas and create solutions.
Our WHISKids, WHISatwork and Wellness programmes look at how we can support our communities in health and wellness. Prevention is better that cure.
Example of an outcome – A parent who attended WHISCumbria16 decided to set up a peer support group for fathers with disabled children via social media. This in turn leads to those fathers not having to go their GP’s – leading to a reduction in pressure on our health services
HEALTH – it touches us all. Do you want to help support and improve our health services? How can we do that? The World Health Innovation Summit is a platform for us as a community to support our health services. It provides our communities with the opportunity to inspire, innovate and share knowledge to improve healthcare. It’s innovative in that it’s for everyone and for every sector as health touches us all. For your digital readers they’ll possibly of heard of Websummit for technology. Now think of our summits as health & social care that includes technology and you can see where we are going and that’s just our WHIS summits! We run other community programmes such as WHISKids, WHISatwork and Health and wellness events that are designed to support our communities and help alleviate pressure from our health services. We’ve more innovative programmes in development. It is a very exciting time for us as a team and the best thing about our work is that we are a social enterprise so by supporting our work you’re supporting your community as we give back to our communities. It’s a win, win for all. As our motto says “Together, We Inspire”.
Q – Hi, could you please introduce yourself?
Gareth Presch, 37 originally from Dublin, Ireland and now living just outside Carlisle, Cumbria. I’m married to Krista and we’ve 2 girls Mia (3) and Darcey (7 months) and I’m the founder of the World Health Innovation Summit.
Q – Where are you based?
I’m based just outside Carlisle, Cumbria. Our work reaches a Global audience. We’ve team members in multiple countries from Greece, Germany, Morocco etc. We make great use of technology such as skype.
Q – What is your background?
I worked in the NHS for about 16 months in eHealth and District Nursing locally here in Cumbria and I was the Former Chief Officer of the National Haemophilia Council of Ireland. I previously had roles as the National Programme Lead for Blood Transfusion, Haemochromatosis, Estates, Primary Care, Health Promotion and have had an extensive career in business development and the charity sector.
Q – Tell us how you came up with the idea for WHIS?
It was a case of my experiences in health and seeing the shift in many sectors towards social good in the community. The future of business will be aligned to social good. Businesses that work with communities will be supported by communities. I’ve witnessed over the last 2-3 years a huge shift in that direction. WHIS was founded on those principles and I guess if I can trace it back to one moment it was probably the Carlisle Ambassadors meeting I attended last March. I sat there and listened and seen the amazing work the local business community where doing in their community which had a direct link to improving people’s quality of life. It was that event along with a visit to Dr Amir Hannan’s surgery in Hyde, Manchester where I seen his work in the community as a GP where I thought we need a space/platform for everyone to share their knowledge so we all benefit, Hence the idea behind the World Health Innovation Summit CIC.
A platform where we can help our under pressure health services and exchange knowledge in a forum that stimulates outcomes and networks to deliver solutions for our community. We work as a team and we all reap the rewards as a community. As our motto says “Together, We Inspire”
Q – How does WHIS work?
Our Summits bring people together from a variety of sectors and that stimulates innovation like never before. When you put people into a room with different perspectives and ideas the innovation begins to flow. That creates networks that inspire positive change for all. It’s unique in that it’s never been done before. It’s a simple idea really. Health touches us all, every sector so let’s bring every sector into the room so we all can benefit. Share our ideas and create solutions.
Our WHISKids, WHISatwork and Wellness programmes look at how we can support our communities in health and wellness. Prevention is better that cure.
Example of an outcome – A parent who attended WHISCumbria16 decided to set up a peer support group for fathers with disabled children via social media. This in turn leads to those fathers not having to go their GP’s – leading to a reduction in pressure on our health services.
Q – How does WHIS differ from your competitors?
We don’t compete with anyone – we compliment and I think that’s what’s special about WHIS. It’s not there to compete, it’s there to help everyone as knowledge, ideas and people who get involved bring positive change for us as a community.
Q – What are the next steps for WHIS?
We’re launching our Greek Summit in October later this year in the coming days and we’re developing the WHIS model locally, nationally and internationally. Locally WHISKids, WHISatwork and our health & wellness programmes are growing. We’ve now over 8 primary schools engaged for example. Nationally the model is going to Cornwall next.
We’re also in the planning stage to host summits in London, Mauritius, Thailand and various other locations around the world.
The potential is endless really and in the coming months we’ll have a few surprises to announce so watch this space!
Q – What are your medium to long term goals?
To share knowledge that helps improve people’s lives. Our main aim is to help people. Our goals are to inspire, innovate and share knowledge that have a measurable outcome.
Q – What do you see as your biggest challenges for WHIS?
Being able to cope with the demand. We’re a year old, we’ve reached 100 countries. Our idea is completely innovative and it applies to everyone. It’s an area that needs innovation and this
space is huge and we’re going to be challenged but we’ve a team in place and we’re ready. We’ve just picked up the Carlisle Living Innovation Award 2016 #bestofCarlisle and we’ve got at least 6 summits planned for next year.
Q What do you see the digital health landscape being in 2020?
As an enabler. Technology can help us in so many ways. I find we as a health community never really explain the benefits of using digital. In healthcare for instance it’s about giving doctors, nurses, allied health professionals etc more time to treat patients and in the future patients will have the access to their records which will improve how care is delivered. Dr Amir Hannan our Chairman is pioneering this work from his proactive in Hyde, Manchester and his results are amazing.
Patients access to records is certainly one to watch for in 2020. Also our work with My Way Code a mental health app will help so many people in the future so exciting times ahead.
Q How do people find our more information?
You can find out about all our activities on www.worldhealthinnovationsummit.com [1] and we’ve a facebook, twitter handle (@HIC2016) or by email: [email protected]
