Action learning sets, training and events

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.

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.

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.

She is an Occupational Therapist, completing her training in London, before moving to Edinburgh and then Dorset in 2007. Heather has a Masters in Advanced Mental Health Practice and has worked within the NHS for 30 years, mainly within mental health services in most settings including acute assessment, community and outreach posts - working clinically and in leadership roles.

She undertook an HEE-funded Patient Safety Fellowship which focused on learning from staff reflections to focus on how patients and families are supported around the time of death. Heather is keen to address the key themes from this within her work: improving system working, communication and staff wellbeing. She has just completed her ILM level 5 coaching qualification.

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.

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.

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.

Meet our Corporate support team

Vicky Martin

EA to Deputy CEO & Strategic Programme Assistant

Divya Beri

Business Support Assistant

Divya has been working for the NHS since 2021 and specialises in project support, communications, visual design and business administration.

Divya graduated from the University of Brighton in 2022 with a degree in Psychology with Counselling Studies and have since been working on her personal professional development at UHS. She started off in UHS as the Wellbeing and TRiM administrator and was successfully promoted to Business Support Team Lead for the Organisational Development team where her business administrative support focused on leadership development, wellbeing, EDI and talent.

Whilst at UHS, Divya also mentored a student from Choices College, a college specialising in developing individuals with learning disabilities, and was given excellent feedback from the student and the college for her exemplary coaching and interpersonal skills.

Alongside her full time role, she also was recruited by the Smoke-free Site team to be their Communications Officer, a role in which she was able to utilise her internal communications and marketing skills by creating comprehensive communication plans, visual marketing materials, organising large scale trust-wide events and speaking with hospital patients and staff members to create case studies for UHS's internal and external websites and intranet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How can we help you?

To arrange an informal discussion,
email enquiries@hiwessex.net

Action learning sets, training and events

We can work with your organisation to develop and deliver bespoke events to focus on your key health or workforce priorities.