Mental health care into the community

Chris, a former NHS CEO has worked as a senior consultant healthcare specialist with Healthcare UK based at the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) for the last twelve years. He is an experienced executive coach and mentor and has a passion for improving health and care worldwide.

Chris has worked with hundreds of NHS and commercial health and care organisations in the UK to take their export offer to operators, developers, investors, governments and health services in the target markets of India, China, SE Asia, the Middle East and other countries.  He has been responsible for the development of a detailed set of international UK offers, including digital health, NHS Innovation, clinical services (most recently diabetes, oncology, cardiac services and mental health), training and education and healthcare infrastructure.

Chris worked for 25 years as a senior leader in the NHS both in a NHS Trust and as a NHS commissioner. Chris also worked in a predecessor of NHS England (the NHS Executive) and in 2012 was seconded to the then Department of Health to develop NHS Global (which led to the creation of Healthcare UK).

Joe Rafferty was appointed Chief Executive of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in September 2012. During his tenure, he has led a significant expansion of the organisation, almost trebling it in size. This has been accompanied by significant modernisation of the estate and digital infrastructure. The trust is now one of the largest specialised integrated care providers in the NHS and includes inpatient and community mental health, community physical health, and learning disability and addictions services.

Whilst at Mersey Care, he has led the organisation embedding the concept of ‘Pursuing Perfect Care’ using a series of audacious zero-based goals, such as zero suicides in care, zero restrictive practice, zero pressure ulcers and zero medication errors. Most notably, the trust has become internationally recognised for its work on ‘Restorative Just Practice’ to support learning in its pursuit of perfect care.

Awarded a Ph.D. in molecular genetics at Queen’s University Belfast in 1987, he spent the next twelve years researching drug resistance in cancer and published over fifty peer review articles on this and related areas, before a career change.

Before joining Mersey Care, he held several Senior NHS Leadership roles including Regional Director (NHSNW) of Strategy and Commissioning and Chief Executive of a Primary Care Trust where he developed an interest in safety and quality improvement, including establishing the influential Advancing Quality programme.

For the past six years, he has been named as one of the top 50 NHS Chief Executive’s by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) and has appeared in the HSJ100 most influential people in healthcare in the UK. He is a founder member of the Zero Suicide Alliance UK and was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year’s Honours List 2020 for his work on suicide prevention.

He was made an Honorary Professor at the University of Liverpool Institute for Population Health Sciences in March 2021.

He is an experienced clinician, educator and widely published researcher focusing on substance misuse, self-harm, suicide, neurodiversity including cognitive disorders and dementia. Steven is a PhD project supervisor and examiner. He is a former member of the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIHME/CSIP) Suicide and Self-harm Working Group, NHS SDO Research Community and Member of NETSCC College of Experts, National Research Grants Committee (GRAM) member for The Brain Tumour Charity, NIHR grant reviewer and COVID-19 SAGE Outbreak Expert Database for Mental Health. In UK and India, he has worked with hard to engage individuals following attempted suicide.  He has been a consultant adviser / educator on many NHS Trust projects for over 20 years.

Steven is responsible for leading on the MSc Psychiatry NHS fellowship scheme for international psychiatrists within three local NHS Trusts. The sponsorship scheme is a collaboration between the University and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust. The programme is GMC approved for sponsorship. He has been project leader for international education and mental health research projects. External roles include Adjunct Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, MCHP, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), India. Consultant Adviser – Youth mental health for World Awareness for Children in Trauma (WACIT).

Chris May is the Founding Director of Mayden, a health tech company whose life’s work is changing what’s possible for clinicians and patients.

With his background in IT and data in the NHS, Chris could see what cloud-based computing could bring to the health sector. The company started producing software applications to support the management of patients and their clinical outcomes.

In 2008 we launched the first version of our flagship product – iaptus – an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for community and mental health services. Today iaptus has around 40,000 users working in over 200 clinical services, including 100 NHS organisations and we now export our products internationally, including to Australia, Canada and Ireland.

iaptus is perfectly positioned to support healthcare services treating large volumes of patients, where outcomes for the patient must be captured and reported locally or nationally. We have helped over 200 services to transform their services and support them in offering high quality, person centred, efficient and consistent care.