Meet our Team

David Mills, Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, Digital Primary Care Innovation Hub Project Lead, Head of Digital, North Yorkshire

David has worked in the NHS for 18 years across Primary, Community, Mental Health & Acute care settings. David was latterly Head of Digital Programmes at Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS FT as well as Deputy Chief Information Officer at Bolton NHS FT within Greater Manchester.

David has led a range of Digital services within the NHS from Programme Offices, Business Change, Application Development, EPR Delivery to Digital Innovation functions. He is extremely excited about the Digital Primary Care Innovation Hub and how it can support making a difference to the experience of operational and clinical staff in Primary Care as well as the population of Humber and North Yorkshire.

As a resident of Lancashire (boo, hiss 😊) David likes to spend time exploring the countryside (and coffee shops) with his wife and 3 year old little boy.

Avinash Pillai, Clinical Lead Digital Primary Care, NHS England, North East and Yorkshire, Humber and North Yorkshire

Avinash is a full time GP at Riverside Surgery, Brigg, North Lincolnshire. He has worked as an NHS doctor since 2001. He is a GP with a specialist interest in cardiology; a GP trainer and a Hull York Medical School (HYMS) associated lecturer.

Avinash is an advocate for allowing the citizen experience in their healthcare journey dictate how healthcare changes its delivery. This approach, lead to his practice being recognised nationally as runners up for the 2021 Team of the Year award in the Professor Keri Thomas Awards, run by the Gold Standards Framework (GSF) for palliative care.

As a full time GP, he became rather frustrated with the lack of innovation optimisation of technology solutions within the health sector; leading him to spearhead change when he was elected as the IT lead for North Lincolnshire CCG and the Humber and North Yorkshire Local Digital Roadmap committee. Two Health Service Journal (HSJ) nominations later; he is hungry as ever to help promote novel ways of working in his new role as Clinical Lead for Digital Primary Care, North East and Yorkshire Region, NHS England.

He has a passion for music but as a responsible clinician and for the sake of patient safety, he will keep his singing antics to himself.

Pam Ford, Senior Digital Primary Care Manager, NHS England, North East and Yorkshire, Humber and North Yorkshire

Pam has worked for the NHS for 14 years, starting her career as a Web Manager managing the content and user experience of the HealthSpace website. She moved to the Implementation and Business Change team to support the implementation of many digital services including the Electronic Prescription Service, Summary Care Record, NHS App and many others.

Since joining NHS England as a Senior Digital Primary Care Manager Pam has supported Humber and North Yorkshire ICB with their digital first primary care projects. She works with the ICB to support them in meeting their core digital priorities whilst also implementing innovative solutions, always striving for new ways to improve patient and staff experience to bring about digital transformation.

Prior to working for the NHS Pam has a varied career background working within the banking industry and for media and digital agencies supporting a wide range of clients with their media and digital projects.

Pam, a qualified PRINCE2 and Agile Project Manager and a qualified Change Manager. She is passionate about ensuring Change Management methodology is used to maximise the success of projects. Pam is an advocate of considering the human side of change when implementing digital solutions, can often be heard saying “one size does not fit all”, and is always mindful the needs of those who are digitally unwilling or excluded are considered.

Outside work, Pam enjoys walks with her dog, Bailey, doing Yoga and loves a relaxing sunny afternoon, reading a good book!

Ellen Barnes, Project Manager, Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber (previously known as Yorkshire & Humber AHSN) and Humber and North Yorkshire Digital Primary Care Innovation Hub

Ellen has 14 years’ experience as a project manager, (PRINCE2 ) in healthcare, in a variety of settings, Acute Trusts, NHS England, Regional Networks and Community Healthcare providers and enjoys delivering improvements which benefit patients and providers. Having delivered many transformational projects across numerous healthcare services, Ellen is a positive, optimist who believes almost everything is possible, where’s there’s a will, there’s a way

Ellen joined the Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber in Sept 2020, project manager for the NHSX Joined Up Care Programme: Remote Monitoring and Virtual Wards, implementing new digital innovations, part of the rapid response to COVID, where over 5,000 patients benefitted.

Before working in healthcare, Ellen worked for 9 years in finance in the City of London, gaining the Investment Management Certificate and leading and delivering multiple improvement projects.  Leaving to fulfil a dream of travel and adventure, spent a year backpacking solo around the world before returning to London and taking her first role at an NHS Acute Trust, leading, implementing and delivering the 18 weeks, referral to treatment (RTT) performance standard.

Returning to Yorkshire in 2012 to be closer to family, enjoys Sunday pub lunches, tennis and virtual reality!