Dr Paula Bennett

Chief Nurse

Paula is a Registered Adult and Children’s Nurse and has had a long clinical career in Emergency Care leading developments in Advanced Practice, Paediatric Emergency Care and Clinical Informatics. She completed a Doctorate at the University of Salford in 2014 after undertaking research into the effectiveness of computerised decision support.

Paula joined HInM in 2016 and initially led the Utilisation Management (UM) Unit, which specialised in urgent and emergency care improvement support. She is currently the Chief Nurse and provides senior clinical leadership across the HInM portfolio acting as Senior Responsible Officer on a number of complex innovation project.

Paula is passionate about innovation and the role it can play in creating healthier communities as well as making health care better for the people of Greater Manchester. Paula is a champion for the clinical voice and its fundamental role in innovation as it ensures care is safer and easier to deliver.

Lloyd Gregory PhD

Academic Partnerships Director

Lloyd plays a leading role in developing academic partnerships with local, national and international organisations to improve the health and well-being of Greater Manchester’s population. In addition, Lloyd is the Education and Training Lead for the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC). He is the Operational Lead for a £3.6m Wellcome Translational Partnership Award (TPA), providing resource to help unblock bottlenecks to research translation or move existing projects forward along the translational pathway.  Finally, Lloyd is a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Bolton.

Previously, Lloyd was the Associate Research Director in MAHSC. He led the development of the MASHC Research Office – supporting the generation and delivery of high quality, high impact, translational and clinical research across the MAHSC partnership.  Lloyd completed his PhD, in Psychology and Neuroimaging, at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London.

Emily Gray

Head of Business Planning

Cara Afzal

Programme Director: Digital and Data

With a career spanning across acute, mental health, and primary care, as well as collaborations with local government, Cara has demonstrated exceptional leadership in spearheading multi-disciplinary teams. Her expertise extends to working closely with industry, academic institutions, and NHS partners to drive the development and implementation of innovative transformation programmes within healthcare.

Cara’s academic background includes an MPhil in the Epidemiology of Chronic Widespread Pain from the University of Manchester, reflecting her deep interest in research and her keen interest in leveraging digital innovation to translate evidence into practical solutions. Throughout her career, she has led various pivotal initiatives, notably playing a crucial role in a large-scale Electronic Patient Record (EPR) deployment, recognised as one of the largest digital transformation programmes undertaken in the NHS. Additionally, Cara has held a prominent position as a Divisional Director in the acute sector and has an extensive background in innovation and research in the healthcare environment.

In her current role at Health Innovation, Cara has responsibility for overseeing the delivery of the organisation’s digital transformation portfolio. This portfolio encompasses a diverse range of initiatives aimed at advancing healthcare delivery on behalf of the Greater Manchester health and care system. Cara’s is keen to drive impactful change through digital innovation and is committed to improving healthcare outcomes and patient experience.

Sue Wood

Head of NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester (ARC-GM)

Sue Wood is Head of the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester and plays a lead role in the operational management of ARC-GM, one of 15 ARCs across England.

ARC-GM supports health and care research that responds to and meets the needs of local populations and local health and care systems.  Sue also has a leadership role in Public Involvement and Engagement ensuring that the diverse communities of Greater Manchester and the Voluntary, Charity and Social Enterprise Groups that work within these communities, have the opportunity to influence and shape the research agenda.

Sue has worked for the NHS in a number of roles, previously as a nurse and then moving into research roles.

To find out more about ARC-GM, please visit: https://www.arc-gm.nihr.ac.uk/

Peter Richards

Head Of Communications

Peter has extensive experience in insight and communications planning across the public sector, health, pharma and consumer industries and leads on the delivery of Health Innovation Manchester’s communications strategy. This includes supporting the communications of our programmes and promoting the role of innovation in Greater Manchester’s health and care system.

In recent times, he’s developed a particular interest in the role of digital innovation in health and care and led the communications on the rollout of the Greater Manchester Care Record – from health and care organisations and frontline workers, and most importantly, to the public. Indeed it’s the impact of Health Innovation Manchester’s work on the citizens of Greater Manchester that drives his interest and bringing this to life through innovative use of communications.

Christine Holt

Head of Programme Management Office

At HInM, Christine is responsible for the APMO function, assuring progress across HInM’s innovation pipeline and delivery portfolio, including tracking, monitoring, risk and issue management are aligned with local, national and regional objectives. Reporting to the Director of Corporate Strategy, working in collaboration with other executives and programme directors, in assuring delivery of the agreed HInM business plan and delivery portfolio.

Prior to joining Health Innovation Manchester, Christine has worked in Programme and Project Management in different areas of Public and Third Sector. Most recently for the NHS at North Manchester Hospital leading on the transaction from Pennine Acute to Manchester Foundation Trust and PMO Manager in the Estates and Facilities Team.

Other key roles: Leading on the Design and Build of the award winning Number One Riverside for Rochdale Borough Council; Lead PM at Chester Zoo delivering key animal enclosure and other visitor attractions. Christine also worked for a number of years as a Civil Servant for the Department of Work and Pensions where she started her project experience working as IT Transformation Lead for Manchester Central District Jobcentre Plus

Jonathan Massey

Programme Director: Academia

Jonathan started at HInM in March 2018 as a Programme Manager working on local and national projects. In 2020, he was part of the team that led the successful redesignation of our Academic Health Science Centre. In October 2022, he became the Programme Director for Academia. Prior to Health Innovation Manchester, Jonathan worked at The University of Manchester as researcher and latterly a Project Manager. He gained his PhD in genomics at Manchester in 2012, collaborating on a large European project.

Philippa Guymer

Associate Director of Finance and Contract Management

Philippa is a qualified accountant with extensive knowledge of public sector finance and strategic planning.

She qualified as an accountant in the private sector, where she had over 10 years’ experience of audit and assurance, governance, risk management, management consultancy and corporate finance. She joined Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2007 as Head of Financial Planning where she was responsible for strategic financial planning and the Trust’s costing systems.

At HInM she is responsible for the provision of financial systems to ensure the best possible stewardship of public money, financial sustainability of the organisation ultimately ensuring best value is obtained for patients.

She provides professional and business planning advice to the senior management team, and supports the organisation to deliver the aims and vision as set out in the Business Plan through the performance management of the operational plan.

Julie Halliwell

Associate Director of HR & OD

Julie is the Associate Director of HR & OD.

Jay Hamilton

Programme Director: Industry & Commercial Partnerships

Prior to joining Health Innovation Manchester, Jay worked as a project consultant working with both the NHS and pharmaceutical companies helping them to navigate complex Joint Working arrangements.

Before this Jay worked in pharma in a number of roles including  Senior Sales Management, Market Access and Training and Development.

She brings deep insight and understanding to the organisation around collaborative project work and a passion for transforming ideas into action.

Oliver Barnes

Programme Director: Adoption & Spread

Oliver is an experienced healthcare leader with a track record of delivering a diverse range of innovative health and social care transformation programmes across large geographical footprints with a range of stakeholders and sectors. He has received national recognition for his work across healthcare and workforce development including published research.  He is currently Programme Director – Adoption & Spread and responsible for overseeing a wide portfolio of innovations determined as part of the national Health Innovation Network (HIN), delivering a range of national innovation products and services into the Greater Manchester system to improve the lives of local people, transform care and boost the economy through innovation.

His portfolio includes the delivery of the nationally commissioned HIN Network programmes, Patient Safety Collaborative and affiliated local programmes.  Prior to his current role Oliver was the Programme Director responsible for strategic oversight and delivery of the national NHS Innovation Collaborative for Digital Health on behalf of the HIN Network, working closely with national NHS England commissioners, HIN Digital Leads and senior stakeholders nationally across the workstream areas to ensure national delivery and to define future innovation areas for Digital Health.  Oliver has spent over 18 years working across the NHS system in operational management roles for both commissioner and provider organisations.

He is part of the first ever UK cohort for NHS England Global Healthcare Leadership in partnership with the University of Keele Medical School developing international partnerships to improve UK Health and Care alongside undertaking an MSc in Global Healthcare Leadership.  He has a British Psychological Society accredited MSc in Psychology focused on applied research to utilise performance psychology and digital health alongside being an NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur.

He enjoys working in a dynamic environment of multi-agency partnerships utilising the power of co design to achieve objectives and ensure needs are met.