Innovation adoption team

Jo Murray

Associate Director Innovation Adoption - Strategic Programmes + Patient Safety Lead

Jo Murray is the Associate Director for Innovation Adoption - Strategic Programmes and Patient Safety Lead. She has a portfolio of projects delivered through the Wessex Innovation Adoption and Wessex Patient Safety Collaborative teams, including cardiovascular disease and the national priorities laid out in the NHS Patient Safety Strategy covering deterioration, maternity and neonatal, medicines, and system safety improvement programmes. She is also a national co-lead for the maternity and neonatal workstream.

Jo joined us from Oxford AHSN (now Health Innovation Oxford and Thames Valley) where she was the workstream lead for sepsis and deterioration for five years. During the pandemic she played an instrumental role in the Covid Oximetry @ home project. She has a clinical background, working as a Respiratory Physiotherapist in several London teaching hospitals before moving to Hampshire and beginning her journey in patient safety and clinical governance at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is trained to Masters level in patient safety, quality improvement methodologies, facilitation and network weaving and is an ILM level 5 coach.

Jo is passionate about adding value and working collaboratively to achieve service-user centred care.

Leah Gallon

Associate Director - Innovation Adoption

Leah Gallon is the Associate Director Innovation Adoption and is overseeing the Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) programme, Medicines Optimisation programme and Primary Care programme.

Leah joined the organisation from an acute NHS trust where she was the Clinical Service Manager for Therapies, and during the Covid pandemic worked as Silver Command and the Trust Covid Operational Lead.

Prior to this she has worked in both acute and community NHS settings around Hampshire.

Leah is a respiratory physiotherapist by background. She has worked in a variety of roles including clinical, operational, transformation and programme lead. She has delivered large scale projects, across systems and has been involved in improving patient pathways, bringing in new digital options and ways of working.

Leah is passionate about making a difference in the NHS after starting her career as a physiotherapist and wanting to improve the quality of care for patients. She is using her skills developed across various roles to make a wider difference within the NHS across the Wessex region.

Holly Green

Patient Safety Programme Manager / Maternity & Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme

Holly joined Health Innovation Wessex in February 2024. She completed her BMid (Hons) degree in 2007 and has worked as a midwife in a variety of clinical settings.

In 2018 Holly started working within Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS) setting up the Wessex Maternity Academy, responsible for maternity training across Wessex. She has since worked with HEE to support the initiation of this model across the south east region. Within this role Holly developed and implemented a nationally recognised multidisciplinary training module on leadership within the birth environment.

She is also the Healthier Together Maternity Lead and designed the Healthier Together Maternity Urgent Care App which was launched to support maternity triage services across Hampshire. This initiative won the outstanding contribution to midwifery services - digital RCM award in 2023.

Holly is passionate about collaborative working to reduce variations in clinical practice, improving patient outcomes and experience.

Grace Smith

Programme Manager- Patient Safety

Grace started her career in the NHS in 2006 as a Therapy Assistant and continued this role whilst studying to become a physiotherapist. Having graduated in 2013 Grace went on to specialise in acute respiratory care, stepping outside the traditional role of a physio and becoming a Clinical Matron leading an acute respiratory ward, for which she won a national Advancing Healthcare award. Before joining HIW Grace gained a fellowship at Health Education England (South East) as Regional Allied Health Professional (AHP) workforce fellow where she led the regional implementation of the nationally commissioned AHP support workforce transformation programme and AHP apprenticeships, before joining the NHS Frimley AHP workforce team.

Grace is in the final stages of completing an MSc in Professional Practice in Healthcare with her dissertation due in January 2025. For this, Grace is conducting primary research utilising mixed methodology to explore the ‘The lived experience of AHP support workers in the NHS’.

Catherine Henderson

Patient Safety Programme Manager

Catherine is a Patient Safety Programme Manager who has joined HIW from a national patient safety investigation body, where she was a Safety Insights Analyst.

Her safety career began in commercial aviation where she spent 15 years as a maritime surveillance pilot, flying instructor and examiner. As an aircraft Captain she developed a keen interest in understanding how and why things go wrong at a system level, and how people respond in abnormal or emergency situations. After further training and experience, she took on the additional roles of Flight Safety Manager and Human Factors Instructor.

Catherine was interested in patient safety, so she started working in the NHS in 2016 to get first-hand experience of the complexities of healthcare, whilst bringing her knowledge and experience of a different safety critical industry with her. She completed a BSc in Adult Nursing whilst working in acute hospital care, and more recently completed an MSc in Human Factors and Ergonomics.

Catherine keeps a focus on system thinking, just culture and human factors in her patient safety work, and keeps current in aviation by regularly flying and maintaining a vintage light aircraft.

Cheryl Davies

Senior Programme Manager Innovation Adoption

Cheryl Davies has worked for the NHS for over 26 years. Graduating with a BSc Population Statistics from Southampton University, she has a strong passion for demography, population health and data to inform strategic decision making.

From 2007 -2018 she worked at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust at a senior level holding Operational Manager roles within Ophthalmology and the Emergency Department, where she led and implemented innovative projects, collaborating with staff and patients to deliver improvements in both flow and experience.

Cheryl has worked as a Business Manager and Project Manager, successfully project managing two national NHS Elect Projects; the development of Ambulatory Emergency Care Services including the development of new clinical pathways and a new build; and developing the Frailty at the Front Door model to provide a patient-centric frailty service direct from the Emergency Department to a frailty assessment unit. This generated a passion in improving services for the older population and led Cheryl to join the organisation as Programme Manager for Healthy Ageing in 2018 which yielded positive impact locally and nationally.

Since 2022, she has worked as a Senior Programme Manager supporting the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Locality supporting the local system in the identification and implementation of innovation. Following a successful secondment within the Innovation Research Life Sciences Strategy Policy team, contributing to the NHS Innovation Ecosystem Programme and final report in 2023, Cheryl continues to lead and support local innovation and promotes both business development and strategic partnership opportunities and is involved in the ARC2 knowledge mobilisation agenda.

Heather Stacey

Senior Programme Manager Innovation Adoption

Heather initially joined Health Innovation Wessex in February 2021 to support the Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme and Managing Deterioration (Children and PEWS). Since then, she has moved to the Innovation and Adoption Team, with a focus on supporting the Dorset system.

Fiona Robertson

Programme Manager Innovation Adoption

Fiona is a programme manager within Wessex Patient Safety Collaborative, and within Nationally Prioritised Innovations for Asthma Biologics.

Fiona is a registered nurse with 17 years’ experience working in the NHS. She has spent her career working in several London trusts both in Emergency Departments and Critical Care Units in a variety of roles. During this time, Fiona developed a passion for patient safety and patient experience whilst developing her clinical expertise. In 2017 Fiona took a career break and completed the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race before returning to London to undertake a new role as the Major Trauma Service Lead for south-west London and the wider Surrey and Sussex region.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Fiona decided to move out of London and back to the south coast. She is looking forward to spending more time outdoors and being nearer to her family.

Nicky Smith

Innovation and Adoption Programme Manager

Nicky joined the organisation in July 2024 and recently completed an MSc in Health Sciences in 2024 from Oxford Brookes University.

She has a background in adult nursing working in the community, primary care and with children and young people. She has experience in transformation, innovation and engagement supporting populations and communities working collaboratively with the NHS Integrated care system (ICS) including local authority, social care, communities, and voluntary sector with a successful track record of delivering transformation capability, population health improvement and empowering and engaging communities to improve their health and wellbeing. Additionally, she has experience supporting families, children and young people and primary care delivering the UK childhood immunisation schedule (and covid vaccination) addressing health inequalities alongside outreach vaccination and tailored support to under-represented communities, advice and education for parent/carers, communities, and the voluntary sector.

Patrick Arnold

Programme Manager Innovation Adoption

Patrick Arnold is an Innovation Adoption Programme Manager with a focus on Primary Care. He joined us from a medical device sterilisation company working across the public and private healthcare sectors, and prides himself on not taking a ‘one size fits all’ mindset but instead finding a collaborative approach to explore the best possible solution for the partner that he is collaborating with.

In addition to his previous role Patrick has a wealth of experience in private healthcare with a focus on sales, business development and commercial activities. He has led and delivered large scale implementation projects with major acute NHS trusts which led to him undertaking an MSc in Health Management and a dissertation that focused on the spread and adoption of the Long-Term Conditions (LTC) Framework.

Patrick is passionate about finding ways to enhance the great work already being undertaken in primary care in Wessex and nationally to improve healthcare practices for clinicians, non-clinicians and patients.

Robert Payne

Programme Manager Innovation Adoption

Rob studied Ancient History at Swansea University and graduated in 1998.

He spent four years working for a regional publication in Liverpool as a sales rep before moving to Australia in 2004.

Rob then spent ten years living and working in Australia (Melbourne) and has nine years of experience working in the travel industry and managing a business (Flight Centre). He has an FA level one coaching qualification and is involved with coaching his sons' football team.

Rob loves to travel and has explored much of Australia as well as many other destinations in Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and America.

Simeon Kent

Innovation Adoption Programme Manager

Before joining Health Innovation Wessex, Simeon was working in one of the UK's Lighthouse projects setting up an automated Covid-19 mass testing facility in response to the Covid pandemic. Simeon's role within this team was as the Laboratory Operations Manager, ensuring the streamlined implementation of automation including liquid handling robots and loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) technology.

Before this he was working with Southampton Primary Care Ltd as part of the Business Development and Support team who pioneered the 'out of hours' primary care service using 'Hubs' for Southampton.

Simeon is passionate about pioneering technologies and even more passionate about seeing them used to improve the experience of NHS patients.

Linda du Preez

Programme Co-ordinator Innovation Adoption

Linda is a Programme Co-ordinator for Innovation Adoption.

Linda is an experienced Occupational Therapist who worked for over 20 years as a clinician and team leader specialising in supporting those living with frailty to stay independent at home for longer and live the lives they choose. Prior to joining Health Innovation Wessex, she worked in a training role educating managers and staff on the importance of managing wellbeing in their workplaces. Her current role enables her to combine her passion for innovation and evidence-based practice, with her skill and experience.

Linda's role involves supporting the work of the Innovation Adoption directorate by co-ordinating spread and adoption of health and care innovations across Wessex.

Caroline Thomas

Innovation Adoption Programme Assistant

Caroline is a Programme Assistant for the Innovation Adoption team, having initially joined our Patient Safety team in April 2018.

As a Programme Assistant, Caroline has worked across the Insight, Medicines Optimisation, Patient Safety and corporate programmes providing project support and events management expertise.

Her background is in health insurance, and for 12 years she worked for one of the largest insurers in the world in claims management. During this time she gained experience in carrying out independent medical assessments, financial reviews and investigation of fraudulent claims.

She also has experience in staff coaching, occupational rehabilitation, recruitment, communications and implementation of small and large-scale change in both current and previous posts. In addition, she has experience in website management including search engine optimisation, sales and complaints handling.

Caroline is passionate about supporting teams to effect change for the better and is PRINCE2 certified.

Emma Wynn-Mackenzie

Innovation Adoption Programme Assistant

Emma is a Programme Assistant within the Innovation Adoption Team. She has held several administrative roles during her career.

Emma started working in HR for District Audit based in Otterbourne, running the new starter process and ensuring all staff data was correct. She moved to Southampton City Primary Care Trust in their HR Team, working on organisational development. This included working on the Improving Working Lives (IWL) and Investors in People (IIP) workplace accreditations, rolling out the annual staff survey, including analysis of the results and managing the staff bank of temporary workers.

Emma then moved into the Public Health Team as a Business and Planning Manager supporting Public Health Consultants with their projects and the Director of Public Health with the completion of their statutory functions including the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). Key projects included supporting the campaign to fluoridate the water in Southampton and surrounding areas and moving the whole team into Southampton City Council under a TUPE like transfer.

Jenny Curtis

Innovation Adoption Programme Assistant

Jenny is an Innovation Adoption Programme Assistant who joined Health Innovation Wessex in 2023. Jenny’s background is in Further Education support services. She began her career as a Library Assistant at Peter Symonds College, before moving to Eastleigh College where she was a Learner Recruitment and Engagement Executive, supporting the learner journey from application through to enrolment. After 6 months, she progressed to a management position as Adult and Community Learning Team Leader, in which she oversaw and developed the College’s leisure course provision. Jenny received her first-class honours degree in Creative Writing in 2020 and has been featured in a number of publications, including Resurrection Trust – a collection of stories about living sustainably spearheaded by The University of Southampton.

Sarah Willis

Genomics Innovation Director

Sarah joined Health Innovation Wessex in September 2024. She has over 20 years of experience in the NHS, working in clinical, operational and transformation roles. Sarah has a BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy degree from the University of Hertfordshire and is currently undertaking a Master’s degree in business administration. She’s held roles including Acute Therapy Services Manager, and Complex Discharge Manager, before transitioning to transformation. Prior to joining the organisation Sarah worked as Senior Programme Manager with the Central and South Genomic Medicine Service Alliance since 2021. She continues to partner with them in this joint role as Genomics Innovation Director.