Finding new innovations to support ageing well

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.

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’.

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.

Emma Wynn-Mackenzie

Programme Assistant Innovation Adoption

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anna Wykes

Programme Manager - Industry & Innovation (Cancer Innovation)

Anna initially joined the Wessex Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) in August 2019 as a programme coordinator. After working on the COPD Discharge Bundle project and Medicine Safety in Care Homes Programme, she moved to work on the urgent Covid Oximetry at Home programme during the autumn of 2020. Anna then moved to a new post, hosted by Health Innovation Wessex (at that time named Wessex AHSN) and jointly funded by Wessex Cancer Alliance to facilitate the adoption and spread of proven innovations that support earlier and faster diagnosis of cancer.

Anna has worked for various NHS healthcare services as a Registered Children’s Nurse. She has worked in both tertiary and community settings, in a variety of clinical roles, and has a passion for delivering and supporting healthcare services to deliver high quality patient care.

Most recently, as a Nurse Educator, she was responsible for leading the development and implementation of the first regionally delivered Paediatric Nurse Preceptorship Programme in England. This programme harnessed the expertise of the different paediatric teams throughout Wessex to provide standardised study days and documentation that promoted the delivery of high quality training and support to any new children’s nurse employed within the region.

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.

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.

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).

Rachel Heard-White

Data Analyst and Quality Lead

Rachel has worked across the private, public, and charity sectors. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering from the University of Sheffield, she worked for a neonatal ventilator manufacturer. She has also worked at the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as a medical device specialist and with The Brain Tumour Charity.

Throughout her career, Rachel has applied her data analysis skills to uncover insights, and drive informed decision-making. This approach has led to the development of innovative projects, resulting in better treatments and enhanced patient experiences.

Rachel will continue her data work at HIW in her role as Data Analyst and Quality Lead.

Gosia Czeladzka

Finance Manager

Gosia joined Health Innovation Wessex as the Finance Business Partner in November 2024. She has a degree in International Finance and over 15 years' experience of working in finance for a range of organisations and charities, including YMCA Fairthorne Group, Hampshire Cultural Trust, Nuffield Health and Brendoncare. 

She brings a proactive approach and problem-solving abilities to her role, leveraging her skills and experience to drive financial excellence and support meaningful initiatives. Gosia is passionate about contributing to organisations dedicated to making a positive impact, and to making a difference through her work.

Kathleen McCulloch

Senior Communications Officer

Kathleen is the Senior Communications Officer at Health Innovation Wessex. She began her career in a local government museums team, where she project managed the creation of their first museums collection website. Having worked on cultural online campaigns within the authority, Kat moved to the communications team where she felt very much at home, initially assisting with the rebuild of the council website and then working more strategically with an additional focus on media and crisis communications.

Kathleen's career in local government spanned almost thirty years, managing digital and social media campaigns, election coverage and advising on communications for major development projects. She brings a wealth of communications experience to Health Innovation Wessex.

Tracey Purvis

Interim Director of Finance

Tracey joined Health Innovation Wessex in March 2025 from NHS Shared Business Services.

Tracey has over 20 years’ experience in public sector finance having previously worked at an Acute Trust and the Audit Commission

Sam Kehoe-Coulter

EA to CEO & Strategic Programme Coordinator

Sam is Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer and joined Health Innovation Wessex in 2015.

Charlotte Forder

Associate Director - Communications

Charlotte is the Associate Director - Communications for Health Innovation Wessex. She specialises in healthcare communications and joined the organisation at its inception from predecessor Wessex HIEC (Healthcare Innovation and Education Cluster), where she brought integrated marketing and stakeholder management expertise to healthcare quality improvement programmes.

Charlotte has over twenty five years’ experience in the communications and marketing sector, including programme dissemination within STEM outreach at the University of Southampton, national Content Manager for NHS Direct Online, and corporate communications consultancy.