Our people

Piers has been Eastern AHSN’s Chief Executive since April 2018.  He has led a transformation of our business, doubling our headcount and increasing our impact for patients, the wider NHS and the health and life sciences industries in our region. From 2019 to 2021 Piers served as Chair of the AHSN Network, comprising 15 member organisations and 800 staff.  He also set up and led a team at the Department of Health for six months at the start of the pandemic,  reviewing and implementing new COVID-19 testing technologies, working alongside Cabinet Office colleagues, the diagnostics industry and the UK’s most senior scientists.

Piers is a regular speaker at national and international conferences on innovation in the NHS and wider health and care.  He was previously a partner in management consulting at KPMG, working with client management teams in healthcare, higher education and social housing on the biggest issues facing their organisations.

Piers is a Chartered Accountant and previously spent ten years in KPMG’s transaction services practice, supporting private and public sector clients in major commercial deals. He holds a MA in Classics from Balliol College, Oxford, and two recent qualifications in Executive Coaching from Henley Business School.

“The UK is home to some of the most brilliant researchers and innovators in healthcare and life sciences. At Eastern AHSN we are privileged to work in a region which has more than its fair share of world-leading universities, start-ups and larger companies, as well as the outstanding researchers and practitioners in our NHS. However, in common with the rest of the UK, we need to get better at scaling these solutions so that they are deployed more widely and more quickly into our health and care system. I am proud to lead Eastern AHSN and to play our part in solving this challenge.”

Louise holds a PhD in immunology from Imperial College London and drawing on both her background in science and years of experience in drug discovery, development and commercialisation within academia, biotech and pharmaceutical organisations, she leads the commercial team to develop partnerships and support innovators refine their business models, value propositions and navigate the NHS to maximise population benefit and generate economic growth at a regional and national level.

Louise joined Eastern AHSN from Johnson and Johnson Innovation, where she led partnership activities across Europe, Middle East and Africa to identify and incubate external assets and capabilities to advance the portfolio of the Immunology Therapy Area for Janssen.

Louise is a board member of the Medtech Accelerator, Strategic Advisor to Enhanc3D Genomics and a mentor on a number of accelerator programmes including Start Codon. She is also a long-standing member of the British Society for Immunology and on the Editorial Board for Immunotherapy Advances journal.

“I am excited to help advance the rich ecosystem of innovation from within, and that is attracted to, this region. By being at the heart of the health and care system we have such huge potential to enable innovations to impact the population, in real time, for this region and beyond.”

Jag provides clinical governance oversight into Eastern AHSN’s programmes of work and is a strong and passionate advocate for the potential of technology to deliver better care and more effective services.

Jag was appointed as a consultant in newborn intensive care at Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) in 1996 and was in active practice until 2012. He was also the executive medical director at CUH for nearly 10 years with a very wide-ranging portfolio. Jag was then director of digital at the trust, supporting the development of the IT infrastructure and services needed for patients and staff, including an integrated electronic patient record.

He has been an honorary fellow of the Judge Business School since 2018, from which he holds an executive MBA in business administration, is a non-executive director at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and a Trustee at Macmillan Cancer Support.

“Great ideas only make an impact when they are put into practice. The best ideas will have obvious patient benefit. If we can clearly articulate evidence of this benefit to the healthcare system, clinicians can make an informed decision with their patients.”

Sarah oversees the delivery of Eastern AHSN’s programme of work from NHS England and partners across the East of England. Her portfolio includes oversight of local projects supporting the NHS recovery from the pandemic and localised challenges for health and care partners and she works closely with the National Wound Care Strategy Programme on implementing, testing and evaluating their lower limb pathway recommendations.

Sarah is the Implementation Lead for the NIHR East of England Applied Research Collaborations (ARC) and is the NIHR Mental Health Implementation Network team (MHIN) co-lead for implementation of evidence-based solutions at a national level.

Sarah has held numerous strategic NHS roles since qualifying as a clinical psychologist. She was the regional lead for the national dementia strategy before taking up a patient safety and safeguarding leadership role at NHS England.

“I was drawn to Eastern having experienced the difficulties for myself of developing and implementing a national digital app for frontline practitioners and want to help make adoption as effective as possible. I really enjoy leading a diverse team that are implementing change at scale and pace, across the spectrum of prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and who support change to become embedded into routine ways of working.”

Mark’s role spans both Eastern AHSN and Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP). His role includes leadership of a portfolio of projects to develop capacity and capability in the region to integrate data to gain insights that inform health and care delivery and clinical research. He is Director of the East of England Sub-National Secure Data Environments (SNSDE) programme and sits on the East of England NHS Digital Portfolio Programme Board.

Starting out as an information analysist, Mark has over 20 years’ experience working in the NHS across a range of operational, information, contracting and performance management roles. He is experienced in leading complex projects and programmes within and across hospitals, commissioning, third sector, and research organisations.

“Recent advances in clinical imaging, pathology and genomic technologies have led to remarkable progress in understanding disease, but the power of these technologies cannot be fully realised until the immense volume of data generated can be integrated, then analysed. Our projects are all in pursuit of this aim, to improve health whilst keeping data safe and protecting the privacy of individuals.”

Caroline leads our quality improvement workstream and our regional Patient Safety Collaborative to identify and spread safer care initiatives across our region and ensure patient safety is at the core of all our programmes. She also supports our evaluation service and the delivery some of our external commissions.

She has held quality improvement, information analytics and performance management roles in multiple NHS trusts, strategic health authorities and the Department of Health and worked on several national improvement programmes, including the successful Healthcare Associated Infections programme.
Caroline holds a postgraduate diploma in leadership and management in public services and is an Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Improvement Advisor.

“I am passionate about empowering frontline staff with quality improvement skills to test and embed improvements. They often already know the key things that need to change, yet we don’t always allow them the voice or freedom to improve the quality and safety of patient care.”

Helen is responsible for overseeing our company’s operational processes, including corporate functions, and leading the development of business development strategies and the diversification of our income streams. She also leads on our public and patient co-production work and is supporting the technical set up of the emerging Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Innovation Hub, funded by the Health Foundation. Helen is also the deputy chief executive for Eastern AHSN.

“We can achieve so much more by working together. Our role is to empower diverse voices and convene all partners to ensure we are building health and care services that work for everyone.”

Teresa oversees our corporate services functions, including finance, human resources, office administration and IT.

Teresa is Certified Public Accountant by qualification. She has both external audit and commercial finance experience. Before relocating to London, she was the Chief Operating Officer of a pharmaceutical group listed in Hong Kong. Prior to that, she has worked as Regional Chief Financial and Operating Officer and Finance Director for an international insurance group and an international broker group respectively. She is an all-rounded Business, Finance and Operations professional and has expertise in leading Finance, Legal & Compliance, Risk Management, Operations and IT functions. She has international exposure and has worked for different multinational companies and industries in Asia Pacific. She is experienced in supporting strategic corporate development and business growth. She is strong in driving new initiatives, including business transformation and change management.

Tracy has extensive experience in healthcare leadership in the region, including sixteen years in roles at boardroom level. Before taking up the role of Chair, Tracy served as a non-executive director at Eastern AHSN for the two years.

Tracy left her role as Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust in 2021 after a 38-year NHS career, in which she started as a radiographer before she moved into operations and management. As well as her qualifications in radiography, she holds an MBA and a management qualification from the Institute for Health Service Management.

“We’re in an ideal place to work with our region’s integrated care systems to bring those innovations with the biggest potential to the fore to deliver a positive impact on our patients and workforce. This means maintaining a focus on what those innovations on the horizon might be and using evidence and data, alongside feedback from citizens and patients to ensure we’re getting it right and that we’re continuing to improve how we support our region’s healthcare services and innovation community.”

Gary has been a GP in and around Peterborough for the last 15 years. He initially trained as a dentist and then after his medical undergraduate training spent several years in various hospital posts, mainly in surgical specialities, before undertaking his specialist GP training.

He is on the executive team of NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (Integrated Care Board), as Chief Clinical Improvement Officer Gary was Chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group between 2016 and 2022, Vice Chair (External Affairs) of the Royal College of General Practitioners(2019-2022) and a former member of the Council of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

Gary recognises the privileged position these various roles give him to really understand the challenges in primary care through a number of different lenses with frontline, local, regional and national context.

“I am passionate about identifying proven technologies and tools to facilitate the delivery of great care to individual patients and to maximise the efficiency of care provision across systems. Translation into, and adoption by, general practice teams can be frustratingly slow. Understanding and overcoming the frontline challenges in speeding this process up is a key reason I am delighted to join the Board of Eastern AHSN”

Lindsey has over 20 years’ experience working alongside executive level authorities in life sciences, charities and the NHS. She is an accomplished project manager, having led several high profile award-winning national healthcare projects and has also contributed to the development of national policy. In addition to these achievements in 2012 she co-founded a healthcare consultancy firm specialising in creating bespoke solutions to address problems in health and social care. Prior to setting up this consultancy she held various senior roles within the pharmaceutical industry contributing to patient advocacy, policy change, programme development, strategy development, and multi-sector partnership working.

Lindsey has a BSc Hons in biology and has held significant board appointments mainly within the health sector including as a board member, chairperson and vice chair. Lindsey’s currently a non-executive director, director, trustee for two charities and a member of the NHS England chemotherapy clinical reference group.

‘The majority focus of my board positions has been in championing the public and patient voice at a national and regional East of England level. I am passionate about patient experience, patient leadership, collaboration and co-producing innovative ways to support the delivery of care that are sustainable in the long term. I am very much looking forward to applying this experience to my NED role within the Eastern AHSN’.

Sarah is the Global Healthcare Management and Clinical Innovations Director at Bupa, where she has held multiple senior clinical leadership and management positions. She graduated as a doctor from Imperial College and worked as surgeon in leading hospitals in London.

She is a trained academic and has published widely in the areas of quality, safety and health services. She has been lead author for clinical guidelines and a member of the team on safer primary care research at the WHO. Her key interest is in developing new models of healthcare delivery, population health sciences and the use data and technology to enable healthcare for both funding and provision services.

”I am excited to use my global experience to bring an additional lens with which to re-imagine health and support Eastern AHSN at the epicentre of a vibrant ecosystem of partners to reduce health inequalities, promote wellbeing and bring joy to the working lives of our talented health and care staff through the effective use of innovation, technology and data.”

Michael is the associate dean of innovation and professor of applied dementia research at the Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia. His research focuses on improving diagnosis, disease progression tracking and symptom management in dementia.

His research group employs various research methodologies (clinical, cognition, neuroimaging and genetics) as well as disease interventions (pharmacological and non-pharmacological) for their research studies. He is working in close collaboration with other scientists as well as old-age psychiatrists, neurologists, nurses, clinical psychologists and speech and language therapists approach dementia from a multi-disciplinary angle.

“It’s vital that we support an innovation culture across academia, clinical services and industry, with service users being central to this triangulation. I truly believe that innovation can be a platform to bring these partners closer together and make a difference in many people’s lives by allowing concerted and complimentary approaches to the healthcare challenges facing our society.”

Maxine is a Research Associate working between The Alan Turing Institute and The Health Foundation. Her work applies machine learning to large NHS datasets. Maxine is also the co-founder of One HealthTech – a global, volunteer-led, grassroots community that supports and promotes under-represented groups in health innovation. She has worked across a range of organisations, including the World Health Organisation on artificial intelligence policy, L’Oreal’s scientific team and technology strategy in Roche Diagnostics. She is part of a number of communities and committees including the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers, the Churchill Fellowship, the British Computer Society and previously, she sat on the DeepMind Health Independent Review Board.

“The application of machine learning in healthcare has the potential to transform how we develop treatments and deliver care. I’m delighted to join Eastern AHSN and use my expertise to help innovators and healthcare providers harness that potential for patients”

Piers has been Eastern AHSN’s Chief Executive since April 2018.  He has led a transformation of our business, doubling our headcount and increasing our impact for patients, the wider NHS and the health and life sciences industries in our region. From 2019 to 2021 Piers served as Chair of the AHSN Network, comprising 15 member organisations and 800 staff.  He also set up and led a team at the Department of Health for six months at the start of the pandemic,  reviewing and implementing new COVID-19 testing technologies, working alongside Cabinet Office colleagues, the diagnostics industry and the UK’s most senior scientists.

Piers is a regular speaker at national and international conferences on innovation in the NHS and wider health and care.  He was previously a partner in management consulting at KPMG, working with client management teams in healthcare, higher education and social housing on the biggest issues facing their organisations.

Piers is a Chartered Accountant and previously spent ten years in KPMG’s transaction services practice, supporting private and public sector clients in major commercial deals. He holds a MA in Classics from Balliol College, Oxford, and two recent qualifications in Executive Coaching from Henley Business School.

“The UK is home to some of the most brilliant researchers and innovators in healthcare and life sciences. At Eastern AHSN we are privileged to work in a region which has more than its fair share of world-leading universities, start-ups and larger companies, as well as the outstanding researchers and practitioners in our NHS. However, in common with the rest of the UK, we need to get better at scaling these solutions so that they are deployed more widely and more quickly into our health and care system. I am proud to lead Eastern AHSN and to play our part in solving this challenge.”