Meet the Team

Dr John Dinsmore is the Health Innovation Lead and Deputy Director of the Trinity Centre for Practice and Healthcare Innovation (TCPHI) and Ussher Associate Professor in Digital Health and Integrated Care. He is also the Trinity College member of the Board of Directors of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Health, Knowledge and Information Community (KIC) Ireland/UK Co-Location Centre (CLC).

Dr. Dinsmore's research focuses primarily on the application of health psychology and behavioural science to digital health interventions for individuals managing with chronic diseases and multimorbidity. Outcomes from his research aim to understand and maximise the appropriate use of digital health technologies as part of a people-centred, digital integrated care approach to home and community based health and well-being management. Dr. Dinsmore has significant experience in building and leading teams to research and develop new technologies, services and practices in a wide range of healthcare areas. His work promotes collaborations between academics, health service, entrepreneurs, industry and enterprise bodies with a focus on translating research outcomes to healthcare market spin out opportunities, including the licensing of new intellectual property, innovating on existing technologies and services, spin out of campus companies and development of industry based healthcare research.

Dr. Dinsmore is a member of the Health Service Executive (HSE) Ireland Digital Academy expert group on digital transformation; steering committee member of the Irish eHealth Research and Innovation Network; scientific advisory board member to the University College London led Human Behaviour Change Project; and has previously represented Trinity College internationally at working groups exploring digital and connected health with the World Economic Forum and WHO. His work is also widely published receiving notable commendations.

Dr John Dinsmore is the project coordinator of SEURO as well as the previous related H2020 project ProACT. He will act as the intermediary between the EC and the consortium as well as the supervisor of the overall progress of the project.

Professor Anne-Marie Brady is Chair of Nursing & Chronic Illness in the School of Nursing & Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. She previously served as Head of School (2017-20); Director of the Trinity Centre for Practice and Healthcare Innovation (2014-17) and as Director of Teaching & Learning (Postgraduate) (2010-2014). She is a Registered General Nurse and Registered Nurse Tutor with 30 years of clinical practice, education and research experience in nursing and health care management. Prior to her move to working in 3rd level Anne-Marie has gained extensive international experience working in health care systems in Ireland, United Kingdom and the USA. Due to her clinical experience, research and teaching Anne-Marie has gained significant understanding of health service delivery issues in both the Irish and International context. Her research work has focused upon the development of health systems and workforce development in healthcare. She has conducted research studies in collaboration with health service providers to examine issues around patient related outcomes measures, self care, workload measurement, practice development, patient safety and competency among health care workers. Her research interests are concerned with the provision of person centred, supportive care and with strategies to meet healthcare demands around chronic illness/cancer survivorship. She is editor and co-author of a book Leadership & Management in the Irish Health Service. She is a member of Board Tallaght Hospital and serves on the National Clinical Effectiveness Committee.

Marta is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. She obtained her PhD in Health Psychology from Leiden University (Netherlands), in 2015. She is a chartered clinical and health psychologist. Prior to joining the EDGE program, she worked as a research Associate a world leading Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London (UK). Her main project was the Human Behaviour Change Project. Marta remains a collaborator in this project as well as an associate to the Centre. Prior to that, Marta was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). A key project in which Marta is still involved is the H2020 “NoHoW: Evidence-based ICT tools for weight loss maintenance” (nohow.eu).

At TCD, Marta is developing a project to advance digital health behavioural science by identifying features associated with personalisation of behaviour change interventions. Per4Change will provide a framework to interpret data which will inform the development of tailoring strategies for best practices around the design and implementation of digital health behaviour change solutions, with a focus on older persons with multimorbidity (proact2020.eu)

Marta is a member of the European Health Psychology Society Executive Committee, and has been involved in various expert committees on digital health behaviour change (e.g. WHO B@Healthy B@Mobile for physical activity). Her research focuses on applying health behaviour change theories to develop and evaluate complex digital interventions targeting a range of health behaviours (e.g. physical activity), in the self-regulation and motivational processes underlying health behaviour change, and methods for the development of the science of behaviour change.

Dr Filipa Teixeira is a postdoctoral researcher on the SEURO project at Trinity College Dublin. She has a MA and a PhD in Health Psychology, both focused on obesity. Namely, in her PhD project she explored the role, beliefs, attitudes, and practices of healthcare professionals towards obesity and obese people, using a mixed-methods approach. She worked on several international funded research projects investigating chronic pain, HIV, adverse experiences across the lifespan, and academic burnout. Most recently, her research interest has been on the needs, burden, and quality of life of informal caregivers of chronically ill patients and the implementation of digital health strategies to improve assistance and well-being among these vulnerable groups. She has supervised master students and lectured about research methodologies and scientific writing. She is also one of the Associate Editors of The European Health Psychologist Magazine, one of the journals from the European Health Psychology Society (EHPS).

Dr. Isil Coklar Okutkan is a postdoctoral researcher at Trinity College Dublin, actively working on the SEURO project. She holds an MA and a PhD in social psychology. Dr. Coklar Okutkan has accumulated nine years of professional practice as a psychologist and ten years of experience as a lecturer. Since 2013, she has been actively involved in teaching and supervising undergraduate and graduate psychology students, delivering courses in research methods, research technique and analysis, personality, and social psychology. Her research interests encompass personality traits, interpersonal and intergroup relationships, and she is proficient in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Dr. Coklar Okutkan recently worked as a research fellow on the project entitled "What Good Digital Health Looks Like in Regional Health Authorities," which was co-led by Trinity College Dublin and the HSE. Her involvement focused on conducting a scoping review of the factors influencing the effectiveness of digital transformation in health systems, enriched by the integration of expert opinions gathered through advisory group sessions.

Alessandra joined IBM in 2013 right after getting her Ph.D. in Information Technology from Politecnico di Milano. She manages the "NLP and Reasoning in Healthcare" research team in Dublin Research Lab. Her research interest are in the area of person centered analytics, management of multiple chronic disease and human interaction for healthcare. Applications areas range from Behavioural Change to Digital Health systems design for self-managing people with multiple chronic conditions. Her original background is in statistics and statistical signal processing. Since joining IBM she has worked in several fields, in FP7, H2020 government funded projects and collaborating with relevant IBM Business Units. She spent several years working on the transport projects in collaboration with Dublin City Council. She then joined the healthcare and social care team and has acted as PI on several EU projects in the area of person-centered analytics for healthcare enhancing her expertise in the area of machine-learning for managing multi morbidity, AI and human interaction for healthcare.

Alessandra Pascale received the B.Sc. degree (with honors) from Politecnico di Bari in 2006 and the M.Sc. degree (mark 110/110) from Politecnico di Milano in 2009, both in Telecommunication Engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in Information Technology from Politecnico di Milano in 2013. She was also enrolled in the ASP (Alta Scuola Politecnica) programme, a school of excellence between Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino. She was visiting researcher at University of California, Berkeley, in the TOPL group, from February to July 2012.

Francesca Bonin is a Research Scientist at IBM Research Ireland, working on AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). She holds a PhD in Natural Language Processing at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and a MSc. in Language Technologies from the University of Pisa (Italy). Her research interests includes core AI and NLP applications. She has extensive experience on applying NLP to real world problems and scenarios, specifically in the area of health informatics.

In IBM Research Europe, she has been part of the Project Debater team, developing ground breaking AI technologies for the last IBM AI Gran Challenge and lead investigator in the HBCP Project.

Dr. Tobia Boschi is a Research Scientist at IBM Research Dublin. Before joining IBM, Tobia received a Ph.D. in Statistics from Penn State University and an M.Sc degree in Mathematical Engineering from Politecnico Di Milano.

Tobia's research focuses mainly on supervised methods for Functional Data. In his work, he combines statistics, machine learning, optimization, and advanced computing techniques to improve the quality of the estimates and perform variable selection. His methods are particularly relevant for "Omics" and Health and Biomedical studies.

Julie is the Director of NetwellCASALA. Her background is in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and digital health technologies, with a focus on designing and evaluating intuitive and useful health and wellbeing technologies for older adults and those who support their care. Julie joined NetwellCASALA in 2011 and since then has led a number of digital health projects in the areas of chronic disease management, falls prevention, rehabilitation and ambient assisted living. Julie is the Principal Investigator on the Horizon 2020 funded projects SEURO and ProACT and the INTERREG VA funded project ECME, which examine how digital technology can support older adults to self-manage multiple chronic conditions at home. She is also Co-Investigator of the SFI-funded Smart Dementia Care project which aims to build a digital toolkit to support people with dementia and their carers in planning and managing their care.

Suzanne Smith holds a degree in Sociology from University College Dublin, a H.Dip. in Business and MSc by research from Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. She worked in mental health, substance abuse and health education in the U.S. for fifteen years before returning to Ireland. Suzanne has an extensive background in intercultural and anti-racism training and research, business development and teaching healthcare. Suzanne has worked on a range of projects including ProACT and as part of a European research team exploring Social Innovation in Ageing initiatives. Her research has included identifying barriers experienced by older people to accessing and using GP out-of-hours, exploring the vocational challenges of home healthcare assistants, and examining the digitalization of care at home and in the community. Suzanne leads the Living Lab at NetwellCASALA.

Gordon is a Senior Software Developer at NetwellCASALA. He received a BSc (Hons) degree in Commercial Computing from DkIT in 2006 along with a MA in Music Technology in 2008. He joined NetwellCASALA in 2016. Before joining NetwellCASALA Gordon worked as a freelance developer and an assistant lecturer in the School of Informatics and Creative Arts at DkIT. He has extensive experience in web application development along with seven years experience teaching various computing modules. In NetwellCASALA Gordon has worked on the H2020 ProACT project, was the technical lead on the ThinkTech project and is currently leading the development of user-facing care applications for the SEURO Project.

With a B.A. (Hons) in Psychology, Orla completed a PhD in Contextual Behavioural Science at University College Dublin. Orla has taught and supervised undergraduate and postgraduate students at UCD and DkIT. As an Assistant Psychologist with ACT Now Ireland, she has delivered training in third wave therapies such Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to both professionals and clinical populations. Orla has worked on the Changing Lives Initiative, within which she conducted a process and cost-effectiveness evaluation of the Incredible Years Parenting Programme for behaviours consistent with ADHD across Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Orla’s current work includes examining the behaviour change impact of digital interventions, on older people with cardiac conditions.

Patricia earned a BSc (Hons) degree in Intellectual Disability Nursing and a MSc by research, in Ageing and Health. From her masters research which examined the experiences of student nurses working with older people, Patricia developed The Student Nurse Stressor-15 (SNS-15) Scale, which has been validated for use in nursing education settings. The SNS-15 received international attention following publication and is currently being translated and validated for Chinese, Portuguese and Turkish language versions. Patricia was a Research Assistant on ProACT and is currently undertaking a PhD examining the role of nurse-led telephone triage in assisting people with multimorbidity to self-manage their conditions.

Séamus is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Digital Health with Netwell CASALA. His research interests include health psychology and mental well-being, and sport and exercise psychology. Séamus completed a MSc. in Applied Sport and Exercise Psychology at Ulster University and a PhD in Sport Psychology at Bangor University. Funded by City Football Group, and using state-of-the-art methodological procedures, his PhD focussed upon the issue of talent development in elite youth football, and sought to provide new insights and resources that could advance Manchester City Football Club's Academy's efforts. He also contributed to the development, implementation, and testing of a mental well-being screening process on-site. Prior to his PhD, Séamus worked as a Research Assistant with Liverpool John Moores University. He worked on the Steps Towards Alcohol Misuse Prevention Programme (STAMPP) randomised controlled trial. This trial assessed the efficacy of a school-based programme in reducing alcohol misuse and related harm in teenagers.

Yohanca has a background in Nursing and an MSc in “Ageing, Health & the Environment”. In addition to her experience as an intensive care nurse, Yohanca teaches “Healthcare Studies” in the adult education sector and has vast experience supporting children with additional needs. She is interested in research focused in older adults with multi-morbidities living at home and the contribution digital health can make to improve their self-management of chronic disease and their quality of life.

She completed a PhD in digital health at Dundalk Institute of Technology, which was awarded by Dublin City University. Funded by the Eastern Corridor Medical Engineering Centre (ECME) project, her PhD focused on an exploration of the role of a medication management app in supporting the care of older adults attending a heart failure outpatients‘ clinic and the experiences of staff and older patients.

Yohanca is currently working on the SEURO project in NetwellCASALA. Prior to this role, she worked as a Research Assistant with the Trinity Centre for Practice and Healthcare Innovation (TCPHI) in Trinity College Dublin.

Prof An Jacobs focuses on the integration of social research within all phases of innovative product development. Therefore, she specializes in user research in the broad sense, combining both quantitative and qualitative techniques (design ethnography, proxy technology assessment, probing and projective techniques, scenario’s and persona’s, living labs). Within the team, she co-ordinates projects related to healthcare and virtual (gaming) experience. With both expertise on adoption and appropriation of new technologies from a professional and end consumer point of view.

Role: An will supervise and support the tasks under responsibility of Imec. She will help to scope and design the research protocols and plans for the requirement, test trial and trial phases of the project, making use of her knowledge of the local Flemish context, the Care Living Labs and the Living Lab methodology. Her focus will be on WP6.

Jéssica Morais holds a degree in communication sciences and a postgraduate in Economics & Health Management, obtained at the Sao Paulo Faculty of Health Sciences, Brazil.

After completing her bachelor's degree, Jéssica was employed in a public hospital as an Administrative Board Assistant. With her experience in financial administration, hospital accreditation coordination, and assisting Board decisions regarding health budget relocation and hospital structure organisation, she wished to expand her knowledge of the healthcare system in Brazil and health economics.

During her follow-up studies, she gained expertise in the collaboration between the public and private sectors in the field of health. This particularly focused on Brazilian public hospitals managed simultaneously by both sectors, also known as public-private partnership.

As a member of the SEURO project, Jéssica is conducting cost utility analyses and developing business opportunities to upscale SEURO for an international market.

Sara Polak is a user researcher at imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel with a background in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Innovation Sciences. Her research interest lies in the interface of human behaviour and digital technologies, with the goal of bringing digital innovations to everyone that needs it. For SEURO, Sara contributes to the transfer of the SEURO tools to the Flemish trial site in Belgium as well as the preparation and execution of the EIH trials in Belgium.

Deirdre Donaghy is Head of Marketing at Home Instead Ireland with a focus on Brand, Digital & Strategy. With more than 18 years’ experience in the development and implementation of business and marketing strategy for private and public organisations that spans the Arts, tourism, and enterprise sectors, most of her experience now lies within the health and social care sector.

Since 2012, she has used her marketing and business development skills to help grow the Home Instead brand and position it as the leading private provider in the home care sector. Her current focus is growing the Home Instead business through the development of new business opportunities and the creation of a strong and sustainable carer workforce.

Maite Ferrando has an Honours Degree Bachelor and PhD in Psychology (1998-2008) from the University of Valencia (2008), Masters Degree in Health & Clinical Psychology (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), with a strong scientific background on quantitative and qualitative methods and relevant papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals. She has been external researcher or advisor expert in different public and private national and international research institutions (EIPAHA, SEAS, EchAlliance) and granted for research stays at the University of Oslo, Stoony Brook University in New York, the University of Washington and the University of Berkeley, California. She has chaired, co-chaired and been invited to many international conferences and events on technical and scientific topics around innovation and human wellbeing research.

Maite Ferrando (PhD) is CEO of Senior Europa SL (Kveloce I+D+i), a company with over 20 years of experience leading the management and evaluation of projects funded by EU-funded programs (FP6, FP7, H2020, CIP, EIT health, AMIF to mention some) as well as also business oriented services, providing support to several regional or international business ecosystems linked with digital health and social innovation.

She has more than 15 years of experience in project management and quality assurance for research and innovation projects mostly funded by the European Commission and other public national and international funded bodies which requires high standards for quality and risk management procedures. Since 2010, she is a European Commission External Evaluator, Rapporteur and Reviewer for competitively funded programmes, including H2020 calls related with technology, health and other transversal research and innovation topics with high social and human impact.

Sabine is supporting AAATE in strategic communications with a focus on accessibility for persons with disabilities and assistive technology as well as evaluation, quality control and dissemination activities in EU projects.

Renaud Scheuer is responsible for coordinating the strategy and implementation of EASPD’s knowledge and innovation activities. As Head of Knowledge & Innovation, he coordinates the EURECO research network. In addition, Renaud has experience working in European projects on inclusive governance, inclusive living, health, and personal and household services. He represents EASPD at the eHealth Stakeholder Group as well as at the European Innovation Platform for Active and Healthy Ageing. Renaud holds a Bachelor degree in European Studies from the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands; and a double Master degree in Public policy and Human development from the United Nations University-MERIT and the University of Maastricht.

Fabrizio De Angelis is a policy officer at the EASPD. He is responsible for the advocacy in the area of work and employment for persons with disabilities and assists the work of the Member Forum on Employment of persons with disabilities. Fabrizio holds a legal background and several years of experience in Brussels directly working with the EU and international Institutions.

Dr. Manuel González is a senior cardiologist at the University Hospital of Norrland in Umeå, Sweden. Currently serving in the Innovation Department of Region Västerbotten, he actively contributes to the integration of health technologies into routine clinical care at both national and international levels. Engaged in collaborative projects, including Horizon Europe, Dr. Manuel co-leads the 'Västerbotten without Borders' initiative, facilitating cross-border digital healthcare delivery to patients in northern Sweden. In addition to his clinical role, Dr. Manuel is appointed at the Epidemiology and Global Health Institution at the University of Umeå, with more than 35 peer-reviewed publications. He holds a Ph.D. in cardiology since 2013 and completed postdoctoral studies in eHealth (2017-2019) at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Brisbane, Australia. Dr. Manuel also holds an Honorary Senior Lecturer position at the University of Queensland, Australia

Mr Kenth Soderstrom is a senior manager at the University Hospital of Norrland in Umeå, Sweden. Currently serving in the Department of Livsmedicin at Region Västerbotten, he actively contributes to the integration of health technologies at both national and international levels. Between 2019-2022 he was the responsible digital transformation manager for two out of six healthcare areas within Region Västerbotten. Engaged in collaborative projects, including Horizon Europe, Mr Soderstrom co-leads the SEURO-project in Sweden, Stratif AI, and Health Data Sweden projects from the region Västerbotten perspective. He’s also worked in and lead a couple of projects with Vinnova, the Swedish governments innovation body. Mr Soderstrom has an extensive experience from the IT- and Telecom sector where he’s worked in management positions at international companies like ERICSSON, TIETO and some smaller publically traded companies in Sweden. He also worked in Washington DC, US, during his time at ERICSSON.

Evert-Jan (Project manager) is Head of the Department of Assistive Technology of AIAS Bologna and Director of the Centre for Innovation and Research WeCareMore of the same organisation.

Massimiliano (biomedical engineer) is coordinator of the R&D Activities of AT team of AIAS.

Cristian (SLT) is an expert in assistive technologies for people with disabilities and in-house consultant for AIAS Bologna onlus. He is also professor of "Assistive Technology applied to speech therapy" at the University of Padua and "Augmentative Alternative Communication" at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Cristian is further the President and Co-Founder of Novilunio, a non-profit association dedicated to inspiring a culture of change in the world of dementia in Italy.

Lisa is a computer scientist. Her expertise is in the development of software and applications in the field of robotics and computer vision. She further works on IOT applications, robotic systems and multimodal communication. She works for the eHealth and eCare projects of the WeCareMore Centre.

Laura is a software developer that recently joined the WeCareMore Team of AIAS Bologna. She is interested in the use of technology to improve the quality of life for people, especially in how healthcare can be supported by technology.

Carlo Montanari is a telecommunication engineer and part of the research team of AIAS Bologna. He is specialized in home automation systems, digital health solutions and human machine interfaces.

Valentina (economist) is a staff member of the Project and Innovation Department of AIAS. She has worked as a researcher in the ProACT project.

Lorenzo (psychologist) works as a senior researcher in the Department Projects and Innovation and in the WeCareMore Centre of AIAS Bologna. He is also adjunct professor at the University of Bologna teaching in the course Psychology of Language.

Arianna Gherardini (psychologist) works as a junior researcher for the WeCareMore centre of AIAS Bologna.

Valentina (OT) works as a junior researcher for WeCareMore centre of AIAS Bologna.

Julie Wyffels is the general manager of Z-plus. She is a nurse by training and is fascinated by remote healthcare and truly believes in the value it can add to care. Julie has been working for Z-plus for 3 years now after 18 years of experience in home care.

Naomi Verbeke is the coordinator of Z-plus. She has been present since the start. She coaches the operators and closely monitors the implementation of the projects.

Margaret joined the Caredoc team in 1999 and is the Corporate General Manager. She leads a very dynamic team delivering a range of health care services across Ireland. Margaret has a proven track record and demonstrated abilities in innovative service development and change management. The Caredoc team work collaboratively with a broad range of academia, healthcare organisations and health professionals from across the primary, secondary and tertiary fields to deliver award winning healthcare services. Margaret is very proud to be part of the development of an innovative healthcare model that has been recognised by the WHO and is contained within their compendium of initiatives for Connected Integrated Health Service Delivery.

Aideen graduated from University College Dublin with a Bachelor of Arts in 2000 and was awarded a Higher Diploma in Computer Science, specialising in Data Analytics, from Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in 2020. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Artificial Intelligence at Dublin City University. Aideen has several years’ experience working in both academic and healthcare settings and has a strong background in supporting research activities. She is lead co-ordinator for Caredoc’s SMILE (Supporting Multimorbidity selfcare through Integration, Learning and eHealth) project.