Health Innovation Wessex at conferences and events

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.

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.

Emily Hunter

Associate Director - Insight

Emily is the Associate Director of the Insight team. She has strategic oversight of the team’s portfolio and of the high quality work we produce. Emily works closely with clients to scope our support and develop our business.

Emily has a background in evaluating global health projects and support Cancer Research UK’s early diagnosis programme, working closely with primary care and system stakeholders. She has led Insight’s evaluation offer for innovators, overseen large evaluations of complex programmes, and regularly delivers sessions to develop understanding and capabilities in evaluation.

Facilitative and calm under pressure, Emily attributes her work style to the huge benefits that come from her love of music, as a performer and a keen audience member.

Frank Ratcliff

Director of Industry and Innovation

After a PhD in the genetics at the Sainsbury Laboratory, Frank quickly moved into commercial research, first developing, patenting and licensing a tool for functional genomics, and then moving to run a series of crop improvement projects at Syngenta. This work relied heavily on bioinformatics, and after 3 years Frank moved to the scientific computing team to support a range of projects across Europe and the US.

In 2003 Frank moved to Pfizer, and then to Boehringer-Ingelheim in 2007 where he worked on a variety of partnership projects with various NHS organisations. In this capacity he joined Health Innovation Network on secondment 2 days per week in 2013 to support their respiratory programme; a move which turned full-time in 2015 when Frank joined the commercial team of Health Innovation Network. His commercial experience spans all stages from lab research to major global products, supplemented with PRINCE2 and a CIM diploma in marketing.

Frank is married with two children and spends most of his spare time outside, either running, cycling, gardening or fishing.

Sarah Turl

Associate Director - Operations

Sarah has over 30 years' experience in a variety of management roles, operating across the public and private sector including operational, sales and marketing; bringing a wide-ranging skillset to her role as Associate Director - Operations for Health Innovation Wessex.

Sarah is also actively engaged in the local third sector as a volunteer, and as an independent local councillor, engaging with a wide range of organisations to influence decisions affecting her local community.

Philippa Darnton

Director of Insight

Philippa Darnton is Director of Insight at Health Innovation Wessex. She has over 30 years’ experience in the NHS and academia. From her early career as an Allied Health Professional (SLT), she has taken her passions for improving patient care and innovation into roles in strategic planning, operational, service improvement and commissioning.

She joined Health Innovation Wessex in 2015 to lead programmes in evaluation, spread and adoption, pivoting support during the pandemic to rapidly capture learning from front line clinicians and managers through an innovative Rapid Insight approach. Having led a team to deliver over 100 independent evaluations of innovations in health care including digital solutions, her work has contributed critical insights to enable decisions about what innovation benefits patients and our health and care systems and how to implement it. Her large-scale improvement work has included programmes in stroke care, cardiac services and neuro-rehabilitation.

She has a Master's qualification in management from Warwick University, which equips her to manage a house build, two teenage boys and a young cocker spaniel.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

Emily Jiggens

Programme Assistant – Industry and Innovation - NAS

Emily began her career with a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences from 2018 - 2021, publishing her dissertation on the role of CDK4 in the pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer. She then went on to study the Global Master of Public Health at Imperial College London, where, alongside special interests in infectious disease modelling and health protection, she conducted a research project on the barriers to physical activity among young women and girls. Alongside her master's studies, Emily volunteered with Cherwell District Council and Oxfordshire County Council, getting involved in a range of health promotion, community engagement, and health inequalities projects. During this time, she also worked as a health advisor at NHS 111, starting off her NHS career.

After completing her Master's degree, Emily was accepted onto the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme in Health Informatics, based in the south east. This course spanned two years and consisted of three placements across Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's Data Quality Team, Torbay Council's Public Health Team, and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board's Population Health Analytics Service. During the graduate scheme, she also completed two further postgraduate qualifications in Healthcare Leadership (Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Award from the University of Birmingham) and Health Informatics (PG Dip from University College London and the University of Manchester).

Emily has joined the Industry and Innovation Team as a Programme Assistant focusing on the needs assessment (NAS) element of the NHS Innovation Service.

Frank Ratcliff

Director of Industry and Innovation

After a PhD in the genetics at the Sainsbury Laboratory, Frank quickly moved into commercial research, first developing, patenting and licensing a tool for functional genomics, and then moving to run a series of crop improvement projects at Syngenta. This work relied heavily on bioinformatics, and after 3 years Frank moved to the scientific computing team to support a range of projects across Europe and the US.

In 2003 Frank moved to Pfizer, and then to Boehringer-Ingelheim in 2007 where he worked on a variety of partnership projects with various NHS organisations. In this capacity he joined Health Innovation Network on secondment 2 days per week in 2013 to support their respiratory programme; a move which turned full-time in 2015 when Frank joined the commercial team of Health Innovation Network. His commercial experience spans all stages from lab research to major global products, supplemented with PRINCE2 and a CIM diploma in marketing.

Frank is married with two children and spends most of his spare time outside, either running, cycling, gardening or fishing.

Gemma Snell

Senior Programme Manager Innovation & Industry Needs Assessment Service

Gemma is an Innovation and Industry Programme Manager. Her focus is to support innovators and to foster more innovation in the NHS to improve health outcomes. She is part of the NHS Innovation Service working with colleagues in Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria to assess the needs of innovators wishing to enter or develop within the NHS.

Gemma has a background of working as part of networks, initially the Cardiovascular and Stroke Networks in London seeing the city-wide transformation of stroke services to set up Hyper Acute and Acute Stroke units. She has also worked on pathways for cardiac surgery, both reducing waiting times for elective treatment at tertiary centres but also facilitating inter-hospital transfers for emergency procedures across London.

Gemma was Regional Lead for Diabetes in London working with all areas of the system from public health and primary care to vascular surgery, as well as considering the educational needs of patients and healthcare professionals to manage diabetes. Latterly she was part of the team that set up the first National Diabetes Prevention Programme to reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and other cardiovascular diseases.

During the Covid pandemic Gemma was instrumental in supporting University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust to set up its staff and patient testing programme. She was also closely involved in the trials seeking to understand the most effective testing mechanism and protocols.

Gemma has worked closely with various National Clinical Directors and participated in the HOPE Exchange programme, which took her to Sweden for a whistle-stop tour of the Swedish health and social system. When not working, she thoroughly enjoys outdoor pursuits including cycling, skiing, paddleboarding and trying out different cuisines from around the world.

Claire Martin

Programme Manager - HealthTech Innovation Strategist

Claire joined the Industry and Innovation team in January 2024 from her clinical role. She is currently working as a Programme Co-ordinator within the team supporting with programme delivery and innovator support. Claire has 12 years’ experience working clinically as a physiotherapist in the NHS, across multiple different specialities, her clinical experience has included working in community, outpatient and inpatient settings in addition to experience with team management, service development and quality improvement. Over the six years she has specialised in respiratory medicine including positive pressure ventilation, tracheostomy weaning and co-ordinating complex discharge planning in addition to being in a team leader role. During her clinical career she has been involved, and assisted leading, in the development and adoption and implementation of a cancer prehabilitation service and has recently led in the design and development of a discharge bundle for complex respiratory patients.

Prior to her role at Health Innovation Wessex, Claire has completed two Msc modules in innovation in healthcare through Buckingham New University (and Oxford AHSN as it was then).

Ani Haughton

Industry and Innovation Support Assistant

Ani joined Health Innovation Wessex from University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, where she held several administrative roles across various departments.

Ani started her NHS career working in Radiology in Royal Surrey County Hospital before moving to Southampton. Her career with University Hospital Southampton began in the Breast Imaging Unit working with teams covering routine imaging and referred testing. She then moved to Southampton Medical Examiners and assisted with the documentation and registration of the deceased from the hospital, linking her with a wide range of colleagues across numerous departments.

Ani then moved to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Saliva Testing Lab based in Chilworth, working directly with the Managing Director and Senior Leadership team to deliver Covid-19 saliva testing across organisations in the area. Here, Ani found her passion for supporting projects that advance our understanding and use of technology to better our community.

Peter Rhodes

Senior Programme Manager Industry & Innovation

Peter is Senior Programme Manager for Industry & Innovation. He joined Health Innovation Wessex in 2018 after a 30-year career as a Pharmacist in five frontline technological roles, four in the NHS and one in the pharmaceutical industry.

His professional specialism is in pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality management, but broad experience in secondary care means he can support technology across the clinical disciplines. He is well placed to quickly understand the place an innovation could have in the health system, and to draw together the support needed to bring innovations to fruition.

Peter is committed to supporting healthcare innovators to bring products and services to market that the NHS needs.