Innovation project and programme management

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.