Ambient Voice Technology (AVT)

Jo Murray

Associate Director - Innovation Adoption and Patient Safety

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.

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.

Simeon Kent

Programme Manager Innovation Adoption

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.

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’.

Holly Green

Programme Manager Patient Safety

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.

Caroline Thomas

Programme Assistant Innovation Adoption

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.