On 3rd February Stop Oxevision shared part one of a timeline outlining the installation of Oxevision across 25 wards and 37 seclusion rooms/136 within Oxford Health NHS Trust. The timeline was shared following a complaint raised to Oxford Health and media coverage concerning the “irrational and illogical” decision to expand installation of Oxevision despite “damning internal reports”. The first part of the timeline outlines how decisions to expand the installation of Oxevision were made by the executive committee despite negative feedback from patients (which described the technology as ‘creepy’, ‘unsafe’ and ‘spying’); ongoing issues with the supplier; a lack of any demonstrable benefit and without any apparent involvement of patients, ward staff, ward management or even the project committee. In fact, the Oxford Health executive committee had not awaited the outcome of reports from earlier stages, or even finished installing the technology, before expanding it to all wards. In a comment to Novara Media, Oxford Health stated:
“Oxford Health has been working with LIO (previously Oxevision) for a number of years now, it is available to all patients on our mental health wards. The decision to employ the system was entirely to enhance patient recovery, experience and safety.”
However, as we highlighted in the first part of our timeline, Oxford Health’s own reports fail to provide evidence of any benefit to patients. Instead patients describe it as “not safe” (Early Insights Report pg. 26) and the technology has consistently been used minimally, perhaps due to few patients consenting to its use. We therefore find it difficult to understand the rationale for expanding the use of the technology so widely and rapidly, and extending contracts until 2029. As we highlight in our complaint to Oxford Health, “this decision making appears so irrational and illogical that it raises questions of whether this was motivated, at least in part, by vested interests”.
Whilst Oxford Health do report disclosed interests of senior staff and the executive committee – as we will outline below – there is a lack of transparency about how such interests may influence decision making, or what steps have been taken to mitigate the effects of these. Indeed, the documents we have obtained through Freedom of Information Request, as well as extensive online research, have also proved inconclusive about exactly how these entanglements may have contributed towards this concerning decision-making.
Given this context, the second part of this timeline considers the origins of Oxehealth and the longstanding collaborations between the company (and its founder) and institutions such as the University of Oxford, the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), and Oxford Academic Health Science Networks/Centres.
In outlining these connections between individuals across each organisation, we are raising serious questions as to whether, in this instance, the close links between NHS Trusts, private companies, Universities and NIHR-funded organisations have had a negative effect on the objectivity and rationality of Oxford Health NHS Trust’s decision making in their implementation and expansion of the use of Oxevision.
Oxehealth to LIO – 2012-2025
In 2025, following years of controversy, Oxehealth rebranded as LIO (to avoid confusion, and because you can’t rebrand yourself out of accountability, we will refer to LIO/Oxehealth as Oxehealth throughout). Oxevision utilises technology developed by Lord/Professor Lionel Tarressenko and his colleagues in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford. The company Oxehealth was established in 2012 as a ‘spin out’ – a private business that commercialises research and intellectual property generated within a university. Universities can generate income from spin out companies, including through licensing the intellectual property to the company. In the case of Oxehealth, Oxford University remains a shareholder of the business, as does Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Beyond financial interests, universities – and key individuals working within them – benefit reputationally through spin outs in being able to boast their research and impact. Indeed, Oxford University have used Oxehealth as an example of their ‘research impact’ to the Research Excellence Framework – a system that evaluates research outputs and impact, and has a significant impact on future funding allocation.
Lional Tarassenko has been involved in creating a number of spin outs for the University of Oxford, however Oxehealth appears to be the only one he remains involved with. Tarassenko recently took to the House of Lords to argue for the importance of public money in funding ‘innovative’ University spin outs to secure the otherwise fraught future of UK Universities. Whilst spin outs may bring great reputational and financial benefits to the university, there is perhaps the potential for controversy surrounding them to bring significant reputational risk to each involved organisation. However, despite the criticism Oxehealth have faced, the company retains close links with Oxford University, and key individuals within each organisation appear to continue to have close working relationships. Indeed, as recently as December 2025, Reuben College – of which Lord Tarressenko is founding president – shared a video of Tarressenko speaking to an Oxehealth/LIO director about the technology.
With both the University of Oxford and Oxehealth appearing to have vested financial, reputational and personal interests in the success of Oxevision, it is unsurprising that they have closely collaborated over the years in an endeavour to embed Oxevision as far and wide as possible, as well as on their own doorstep. Indeed, Oxford Health NHS Trust – which despite the name covers a wide area across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Bath and North East Somerset – played a key role in the early development and deployment of ‘Digital Care Assistant’, which would later be named Oxevision.
Oxehealth’s origins and networks of connection – 2012-2015
Oxehealth/LIO describe their technology as “co-created with patients, carers, clinicians and leaders – not just once but at every stage”. However, since its founding in 2012, the technology has been aimed at a wide range of target populations. In 2014 the Oxehealth website listed several ‘application advisors’ tasked with identifying target markets to accelerate proposition development. Where Tarasenko had the root of an idea to “turn cameras into health monitors”, the challenge was to find a use that would bring big commercial gain (and, we might suggest, a way to navigate the notable ethical and privacy implications of the use of what is fundamentally a CCTV camera with added functions).
In 2013, the technology was evaluated in patients undergoing haemodialysis at the Oxford Kidney Unit and babies in neonatal wards. At one point baby monitors were evaluated as a possibility but it was decided by the Oxehealth business team that this was “too niche” an application. In 2015, Oxehealth/LIO were awarded £606,000 to trial their Oxecam technology with patients having undergone upper-gastrointestinal cancer surgery, boasting that it could potentially be used to monitor five vital signs – capabilities which seemingly never came to fruition. Around this time, Oxehealth were also working with Oxford Academic Health Science Network (now Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley) on a proposal to use this technology as a monitoring system for gestational diabetes monitoring – yet another application that was never pursued further. Early Oxehealth job adverts have also suggested a wide range of ambitions for the technology to be used everywhere from children’s nurseries, to trains, and a brief foray into space tech in 2018. From the beginning, funding from the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), as well as support from ‘NIHR infrastructure’ has been pivotal for Oxehealth.
We expect that Oxehealth were possibly facing two key issues in these many attempts to find a use for the technology: privacy concerns about the use of videos of patients required to develop the software, and its limited capabilities in terms of health monitoring. Against this context, from 2016 onwards, Oxehealth’s main focus was on using the technology in ‘secure rooms’. Their marketing materials focus heavily on the (financial) cost of deaths in custody to the taxpayer which they estimate at “up to £3 million”, reflecting a cold and callous view of the value of the lives of those detained by the state. As such, Oxehealth appeared to identify a prosperous market to exploit, where those in these spaces often have the right to object to a camera withheld.
Still from ‘Secure Room Monitoring – Samsung WN III &Oxecam’ YouTube
In a 2022 interview with the Financial Times, Tarassenko describes his interest in exploring the real world applications of the technology that would become Oxevision, deciding to test a whole range of potential applications as “the market effectively will tell you, at least commercially, where the applications are”. Later in the article, Tarassenko recalls his then PhD student, now Oxehealth’s director of Research Oliver Gibson, speaking to a friend who was a medical student working at Broadmoor and discovering over dinner together that the technology would be “ideal” for psychiatric patients. Oxehealth’s collaboration with Broadmoor hospital began around 2015, at which point ‘Oxecam’ was described explicitly as CCTV.
Oxehealth and Oxford Health initial pilot research 2015 – 2020
Oxehealth’s realisation that the product could be marketed to psychiatric hospitals more broadly appears to have roots in collaboration with Oxford Health NHS Trust. In 2016, Professor John Geddes – who was director of research and development at Oxford Health at the time – and consultant psychiatrist Dr Alvaro Barrera discussed an idea to use “sensors” [read: cameras] to monitor patients overnight. According to an Oxford Health article, “the two came up with the idea” of what would later become Oxevision. The article continues, “as head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, Professor Geddes was able to put Dr Barrera in touch with Oxehealth, a company founded by the biomedical engineering department at the university.” Subsequently a collaboration between Oxford Health and Oxehealth began in 2017.
As the article highlights, it was through Geddes’ roles within the University of Oxford psychiatry department and the Oxford Health NIHR BRC (of which he was director at the time) that he became connected to Oxehealth. In 2019, as well as his role at Oxford Health, Geddes was director of the Oxford Health Clinical Research Facility (CRF) and was involved with the Oxford Academic Health Science Centre.
Before we move to discussing the Oxford Health Oxevision pilot study in greater detail, this timeline will first outline the complex networks of different publicly funded (through the National Institute of Health and Care Research) bodies linked by a small number of influential men.
Reader: if you are confused by the multitude of acronyms and overlapping organisations and unsure what each of these are, you are not alone. We seek to unpick this tangled web, to make these connections clearer. We will focus specifically on four connected institutions:
- Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre (BRC)
- Oxford Health Clinical Research Facility (CRF)
- Oxford Academic Health Science Network (AHSN, now Oxford and Thames Valley Health Innovation Network)
- Oxford Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC, now Oxford Academic Health Partners)
We will highlight key individuals in each institution who would go on to be central to the uptake and implementation of Oxevision. We will also outline the ongoing role of each organisation in the expansion of Oxevision across Oxford Health NHS Trust.
Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN) and Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs)
Academic Health Science Networks (now Health Innovation Networks) and Academic Health Science Centres are (confusingly) interconnected but distinct organisations funded through the NIHR and formerly connected to NHS England. Their purpose is to “connect the NHS, academic organisations, local authorities, charities and industry” to “generate a rich pipeline of demonstrably useful, evidence-based innovations” and “to support the adoption and spread of proven evidence-based innovations across England”. In a blog Stop Oxevision published to our website in 2023, we discussed the involvement of the Academic Health Science Networks in the national adoption of Oxevision and the controversial Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM). We discussed the convoluted structure of these organisations and lack of transparency and accountability when things go wrong, suggesting that “from an external perspective, this structure appears convoluted, making it hard to understand where responsibility lies – and perhaps accordingly, easier to skirt accountability where required”.
Nationally, both the AHSCs and AHSNs have endorsed Oxevision and promoted its national expansion, despite any suggestion of due consideration of its safety, legality and effectiveness. UCL Partners (University College London) was involved with Essex Partnership University NHS Trust’s (EPUT) use of Oxevision; Oxehealth was promoted by the East Midlands AHSN; and Midlands Partnership won an award from the AHSN for their use of Oxevision in 2023. In 2021, Oxehealth was awarded a NHS Innovation Accelerator fellowship – granting financial and mentoring support and endorsement to support national adoption of the product across the NHS at “scale and pace”.
In the Oxford area, the AHSN is now called Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley, whilst the AHSC is named Oxford Academic Health Partners. Support for Oxehealth from the Oxford AHSN and AHSC began from as early as 2015.
In 2013, alongside John Geddes, Tarassenko was reportedly part of the AHSN application leading on technologies. In a meeting in January 2013, Tarassenko, who had recently established Oxehealth, “introduced a number of e-health and m-health technologies that were being developed within the OxAHSN and the intention to roll these out across the Network”.
Once again, alongside Geddes, In September 2013, Tarassenko was part of the original application for the Oxford Academic Health Science Centre, listed as a lead for the Big Data: Delivering the Digital Medicine Revolution theme. The application highlights Tarassenko’s “long-standing track record in the acquisition and analysis of such large datasets”. John Geddes was the proposed lead for the theme Cognitive Health: Maintaining Cognitive Function in Health and Disease.
When the AHSN and AHSC opened in November 2013 Tarassenko appeared to no longer be formally involved. However, he remained an external, if less formal, collaborator (by 2014, Tarrasenko was working closely with the AHSN on a gestational diabetes app which later won awards). From as early as 2015, Oxford AHSN were collaborating with Oxehealth.
In 2016, the Oxford AHSN listed Oxehealth as a case study for its use within intensive care, paediatrics and “the monitoring of vulnerable individuals in detention”.
AHSN Digital health report 2016 pg. 39
In 2019, when the AHSC reapplied for funding, they highlighted collaborations between the AHSN/AHSC and Oxehealth numerous times as an example of their ‘success’:
“A track record in multidisciplinary biomedical engineering innovations including academic-commercial collaborations and spinouts in areas such as tissue engineering, organ preservation (Organox), remote monitoring (OxeHealth), virtual reality (Oxford VR) and targeted drug delivery (OxSonics)”. – Oxford AHSC re-application 2019 pg.14
In the same year, Oxford AHSN, whose senior members included the Oxford Health CEO and their Chief Medical Officer, nominated Oxehealth for awards and “consideration for national adoption through the AHSN Network”. As aforementioned, Oxehealth was later nominated for multiple national awards and was awarded financial support and mentorship through the NHS Innovation Accelerator.
Oxford Health NHS Trust
In June 2020, Nick Broughton joined Oxford Health NHS Trust as the new CEO, replacing Stuart Bell. In Spring 2021, he was joined by Karl Marlowe as Chief Medical Officer (CMO), who is still in post. John Geddes worked within the Trust until June 2021. The current CEO, since June 2023 is Grant McDonald, however, he announced his retirement on the 14th January 2026.
As we outlined in the first part of our timeline, the first Oxford Health business case for Oxevision was signed in March 2021. The Project Closure report presents a somewhat conflicting story, however, since it appears that the decision to expand Oxevision to “a further 8 wards in FY 23/24 and the balance of Inpatient wards in FY 24/25” was made on the 27th February 2023 (see pages 6 and 7 of the Project Closure report). At this stage Nick Broughton remained the CEO. Grant McDonald was the interim CEO in May 2024 when the decision was made to extend all Oxehealth contracts for a further 5 years, however Broughton was still in the role, on secondment until September 2024. Marlowe has remained in his role as CMO throughout this time.
Dr Nick Broughton was the CEO of Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust between 2020-2023 and was on secondment until 2024. During this time, he became a board member of both the AHSN and AHSC. He is also an associate fellow at the University of Oxford. Broughton also has links with NHS Confederation (of which Oxehealth are members) and was a board member of Wessex Academic Health Science Network between 2018 and 2021. Wessex AHSN, now named Health Innovation Wessex, was heavily involved in the endorsement of SIM and then in subsequently blocking the statement written by StopSIM and NHS England in 2023.
Oxford Health ‘disclosures and declarations’ 2024
Dr Karl Marlowe, Oxford Health Chief Medical Officer since 2021 to the present day, reportedly has “executive responsibility for research across the trust”. Since 2023, he has been the chair of the Oxford Health BRC, the Oxford and Thames Valley ARC and the NIHR Oxford HealthTech Research Centre. He also is a board member of the Oxford AHSN and AHSC.
Oxford Health ‘disclosures and declarations’ 2024
As we noted in the first part of this timeline, CMO Karl Marlowe has been outspoken in Oxford Health board meetings in defending their use of Oxevision. For example, in the November 2023 Board meeting Marlowe noted that despite “ethical questions” and issues raised, the Trust were continuing with the installation of Oxevision as ‘it was better to have it than not’ and ‘other trusts use it’.
“KM provided an update and noted that Oxevision was being rolled out across all the Trust’s general adult wards. He noted that despite the ethical questions/discussions that had taken place with the 17 trusts already using it, the decision had been taken that it was better to have an accurate observation than not. He highlighted that the resolution of the video camera was exceptionally low so there were no issues with privacy being breached.” – Oxford Health November 2023 board meeting minutes pg. 334
In our article shared in 2023, Stop Oxevision expressed concerns about the role the AHSNs, one of which platforms the NHS Innovation Accelerator, had played in endorsing Oxevision, without due scrutiny of its safety or legality, we reiterate our conclusion from 2023:
“Given the significant concerns relating to the safety, legality and ethics of both SIM and Oxevision, it appears the NHS Innovation Accelerator has failed to adequately scrutinise the products it has funded and endorsed resulting in the expansion of dangerous and unethical practices. This raises the question of whether the NHS Innovation Accelerator is fit for purpose. We echo the calls of the StopSIM Coalition and The Royal College of Psychiatrists [16] for an urgent review into the practices of the NHS Innovation Accelerator and Academic Health Science Networks”
BRC/CRF
The NIHR funds 20 Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs), two of which are based in Oxford. These are collaborations between universities and NHS organisations that “facilitate early stage experimental medicine research and support the translation of scientific discoveries”. The Oxford Health NIHR BRC was founded in 2016 with £12.8 million funding. The founding director was John Geddes.
Oxford AHSN report 2016 pg.76
Shortly following the opening of the BRC in 2016, John Geddes began working with Dr Alvaro Barrera on the initial Oxevision pilot at Oxford Health with funding from the newly-founded Oxford Health BRC (as we will discuss in the forthcoming section of this timeline). However, the collaborations between Oxford Health NHS Trust, the NIHR Oxford infrastructure and Oxehealth did not end there. In 2021, the Oxford Health Oxevision business case outlines ongoing collaboration between the Trust, the BRC and Oxehealth “The trust (Professor John Geddes and the BRC) are in late-stage discussions with [the] provider [Oxehealth] on a Strategic Partnership with the Digital/Information research theme”. (pg. 2). This business case appears to highlight this as a strength, and as further rationale for the installation of Oxevision across seven wards, rather than as a potential conflict of interest.
In 2022, The Oxford Health BRC was awarded a second round of funding, this time for £34.5 million. Geddes remained the director, now working alongside Oxford Health CEO, Nick Broughton, and Chief Medical Officer Karl Marlowe as the Chair of the board – who both subsequently appear to have been instrumental in the installation of Oxevision across Oxford Health. Oxehealth founder, Lionel Tarrassenko is listed as a collaborator on the ‘better sleep’ and ‘data science’ themes.
The NIHR describes Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs) as “state-of-the-art, purpose built facilities based in NHS hospitals that are dedicated to delivering early phase, experimental medicine and high-risk studies”. The Oxford Health CRF was originally established in 2011 by John Geddes. The Oxford Health CRF have also worked with Oxehealth and currently list them as an industry collaborator on the website. Indeed, the Oxford Health CRF has two sleep rooms with Oxevision cameras installed. However, despite calls for researchers to use these study rooms, Oxevision usage reports suggest the devices are yet to be used.
There are clearly close, cross-sectoral relationships between individuals and institutions responsible for driving the rollout of Oxevision at Oxford Health NHS Trust. Geddes and Tarassenko, long-time collaborators, were both significant in setting up not only the AHSN and AHSC, but also the BRC. Marlowe and Broughton became associated with all three organisations more recently, cementing the links between them. Such close relationships have led us to raise concerns about their potential effect on decision-making around the technology.
Oxford Health and Oxehealth pilot study
Having outlined the involvement of the AHSN, AHSC, CRF and BRC and various intertwining interests between key individuals within each, we will now consider the original Oxford Health Oxevision/Digital Care Assistant trial. The study was conducted in 2019, however collaboration had started in 2016, when, as we previously described, John Geddes and colleague Dr Alvaro Barrera “came up with the idea” of using video cameras to conduct observations of patients, and connected with Oxehealth. The project was funded by the newly-opened NIHR Oxford Health BRC and the NIHR Oxford Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC, now ARC) and delivered in partnership with Oxehealth.
In the UK, research conducted within an NHS institution requires ethical approval from the NHS Health Research Authority (HRA), in addition to any relevant local ethical approval processes within the local university. The NHS HRA defines research as “the attempt to derive generalisable or transferable new knowledge to answer or refine relevant questions with scientifically sound methods”. It may also involve comparing interventions, “particularly new ones” and collecting new, not routinely collected data.
In contrast, Oxford Health NHS Trust define ‘service evaluation’ and ‘service development’ – which may not require ethical approval – as follows:
Oxford Health “is my project research?”
Despite this, there are no public records of any ethical approval obtained in relation to the Oxford Health Oxevision pilot study. Instead, this is described as a ‘service evaluation’ or ‘service improvement’ project. However, in the publication, the study team describe their aim “to establish whether it is safe to conduct nursing observations remotely from the nursing office using the novel digital technology described [Oxevision]”. They further outline that “this is the first time that digital technology has been used on a real-world clinical setting to carry out nursing observations at night”. Therefore, in our reading, the Oxevision pilot project, which involved testing a hypothesis and trialing the use of a novel technology in a way that had not yet been tested within the Trust or elsewhere, would constitute research and require ethical approval.
We have raised a formal complaint with the NIHR Oxford Health BRC who funded and oversaw the research. Additionally, we have raised this issue with BMJ Mental Health, who published the research, despite it appearing to breach their own author guidelines in requirements to report conflicts of interests and details of ethical approvals.
The study focused primarily on the use of Oxevision as a way of conducting mental health observations remotely by using the video camera to view patients. The “safety” of observing patients in this way was based on the “accuracy of observations” and a review of incident reports.
“Subsequently, 275 observations over 22 patient nights were analysed. The observations using the sensors matched with the observations carried out without sensors in 100% of the cases […] The ward incidents log was reviewed, and no incidents related to the sensors were found. Thus, the new observations protocol using the sensors was found to be as accurate as observations carried out in person”.
As indicated in the passage above, the “safety” of conducting observations through the video camera system was merely based on the absence of incidents reported over “22 patient nights” (i.e. 3.7 nights with patients in 6 rooms). There was no measurement of the numbers of incidents, no control group, no record of whether patients were asleep through the night and no consideration of the potential risks that this practice may raise. Furthermore, it is unclear what is meant by the “accuracy” of observations, or whether this simply means that the checks conducted both in person and through the camera agreed that patients were alive. It is important to highlight that, whilst observations of patients can be experienced as intrusive and disruptive, they are not intended to be solely an activity of checking for signs of life, but also an opportunity for engagement with patients, for instance in offering emotional or practical support to a patient who is struggling to sleep at night.
Subsequently, the study involved using Oxevision to conduct ‘observations’ from the office in place of in-person checks. After 4 months no incidents were logged on the system related to Oxevision, however the article does note that “on a few nights, usage was slightly lower than expected”, suggesting some observations may have been missed. The mere absence of reported incidents should not be equated with “safety”, and the article provides no discussion of the magnitude of the potential risks of replacing in-person observations with CCTV.
Moreover, some seemingly conflicting figures are presented in relation to the impact of the use of Oxevision on patient length of stay, with a correction subsequently submitted providing entirely different figures (even different participant numbers) without explanation for the error, further undermining the credibility of the article. Despite the poor methodology and inconclusive results, the study concluded that observations conducted via the CCTV function of Oxevision were ‘as safe as treatment as usual’. An Oxehealth branded report of the study states: “the service improvement evaluation demonstrated that a modified protocol [of patient observations] significantly improved patient and staff experience with no reduction in safety, whilst leaving the underlying Engagement and Observation policy at night largely unchanged.” This research would later be cited across many NHS Trust business cases (written by or in collaboration with Oxehealth) for the deployment of Oxevision; making the bold (and unsupported) claim that observations conducted via Oxevision are as “as safe as traditional methods”.
Devon Partnership Trust 2024 Oxevision business case pg.14
In addition, the ‘observation protocol’ presented in the article (figure 2) has been reproduced in numerous Oxehealth branded materials. Notably, although this was originally based on using Oxevision overnight, the figure – which does not explicitly reference the nighttime parameters – has been used by Oxehealth and NHS Trusts in relation to conducting observations at any time of the day [e.g. in Devon Partnership Oxevision policy].
Figure 2 from: “Introducing artificial intelligence in acute psychiatric inpatient care: qualitative study of its use to conduct nursing observations”
However, from the beginning of the 2017-2019 trial, Oxford Health (unsurprisingly) appears to have faced challenges with the Oxevision camera not being acceptable to patients. The research publication reports: “patients as well as staff members asked challenging questions, including concerns about patients’ safety, data confidentiality and impact on staffing levels.” Nevertheless, in 2021, Oxford health and Oxehealth won awards for their use of Oxevision as ‘Best Contribution to Patient Safety’ alongside Coventry and Warwickshire (CWPT) and South London and Maudsley (SLaM). Oxford Health collected the award alongside Oxehealth and celebrated this in various Oxford Health documents. Six weeks later a patient died on a Coventry and Warwickshire ward where Oxevision was in use. SLaM no longer uses Oxevision and CWPT have now removed it from most of the wards, citing a lack of evidence to demonstrate its value.
Charlotte Wood Twitter/X Oxehealth’s ‘Director of Growth’, Charlotte Wood celebrates the award and tags Nick Broughton, the then CEO of Oxford Health
Summary
This takes us to the point at which the first business case was signed in 2021 to expand installation of Oxevision across seven wards, whilst John Geddes and the NIHR Oxford Health BRC were continuing their collaborations with Oxehealth and Lionel Tarassenko.
We have attempted to map the longstanding links between Lionel Tarassenko and Oxehealth with the University of Oxford (who remain shareholders of the business), Oxford Health NHS Trust, and various Oxford NIHR infrastructure.
We suggest that, as has been illustrated through the use of Oxehealth as an example of the ‘success’ of these organisations when seeking to secure and retain funding, these NIHR-funded organisations stood to gain from the continued ‘success’ and expansion of Oxehealth.
As we outlined in the introduction to this timeline, the lack of transparency from Oxford Health NHS Trust makes it hard to be certain of the extent to which these individual and institutional connections may have influenced the decision making surrounding installing Oxevision in 2021, expanding it in 2023, and renewing contracts in 2024. However, as we described in the first part of this timeline, the issues Oxford Health encountered (and continue to encounter) regarding Oxevision have raised serious questions about what underpinned the motivations to install the technology so widely and rapidly, without reviewing troubling outcomes of earlier stages of implementation or exercising caution in the face of mounting public concern.
We suggest such poor decision making and the lack of clarity about how it may have been influenced by vested interests risks undermining public trust, not only in Oxford Health NHS Trust, but also the University of Oxford and Oxford NIHR infrastructure.
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