The Helix team
Our team includes clinicians, designers, technologists, engineers and academics. We are united by our motivation to create positive impact on people's lives through applying our creativity to healthcare challenges.
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Lord Ara Darzi
Co-Director
Lord Darzi is a Professor of Surgery and Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London. Research led by Professor Darzi is directed towards achieving best surgical practice through innovation in surgery and enhancing patient safety and the quality of healthcare. In 2007, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health. Upon relinquishing this role within central government, Professor Darzi sat as the UK’s Global Ambassador for Health and Life Sciences until March 2013. Professor Darzi was appointed and remains a member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council since June 2009.
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Paul Thompson
Co-Director
Paul is the Rector of the Royal College of Art (RCA). Prior to 2009, he was Director of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, where he initiated ‘Design for the Other 90%’, a programme exploring sustainable design solutions for the developing world. He is a Trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum and sits on the Ashmolean Museum Board of Visitors. He is also a member of the Programme Advisory Committee of the Wellcome Collection, Wellcome Trust.
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Leila Shepherd
Managing Director
Leila has nearly 20 years' experience in developing and scaling healthcare technology from concept to launch. Prior to joining Helix, she was part of the executive management team at NHS Digital where she led key national delivery initiatives as part of the Covid response, as well as shaping the strategy for delivery of digital and data architecture for the NHS. Before this, she was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, leading multi-disciplinary teams to deliver tangible impact in areas including wearables, advanced analytics, and commercial strategy. Leila began her career as CTO of Imperial spin-out DNA Electronics, a developer of point-of-care diagnostics. She has a PhD in Electronic Engineering, holds multiple patents, and has extensively published novel analytical techniques in high-impact journals.
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Jodie Chan
PPIE Officer
Jodie is the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Officer at the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI). Jodie helps to ensure meaningful involvement of patients, carers and public members in research and design projects at IGHI. She sits in the Design Strategy Team, who also work in a cross-cutting way with researchers, clinicians and patients, to ensure projects and services are designed with patients at the centre. Prior to joining the Helix Centre, Jodie worked as Research Manager for the Diabetes Research Steering Groups at Diabetes UK and had a particular focus on the use of research to tackle health inequalities in diabetes. She holds an MSc in Global Health and Development from UCL.
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Gianpaolo Fusari
Senior Designer
Gianpaolo is an Industrial Designer with over 10 years experience in product design and development in healthcare. Since joining Helix, Gianpaolo has applied his product design skills in different projects including improving uptake to bowel cancer screening and reducing pressure ulcers caused by oxygen therapies. He currently leads our work in neurorehabilitation where he is working with stroke survivors and clinicians to develop solutions to improve arm rehabilitation. Before joining Helix he was a Senior Research Associate at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design where he led the design work on the award-winning redesign of the UK ambulance. Gianpaolo holds a joint MA/MSc from the RCA and Imperial.
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Alex Dallman-Porter
Designer
Alex is a designer within the Design Strategy Team at the Helix Centre, and works on projects concerned with improving quality of life in our later years through monitoring for early signs of age-related decline and reviewing the approach to care at the end of life. With a cross-disciplinary background in biomedical science and design engineering, he synthesises technical understanding of healthcare-related issues with a human-centre approach to design. He has previous experience in healthcare innovation as COO and founding team-member of Charco Neurotech, a startup that developed a wearable, non-invasive device and accompanying support ecosystem that ameliorates the movement symptoms of Parkinson's disease using vibrotactile stimulation and cueing. He holds a BA in Biomedical Science from the University of Oxford and an MA/MSc in Innovation Design Engineering from Imperial College and the Royal College of Art
Calandra Feather
Research Lead, Palliate
Calandra is the research lead for the Palliate project with the Helix Centre. In this role she will be evaluating interventions to support lay carers administering anticipatory medicines to loved ones at home at the end of life. Calandra’s PhD studies utilised mixed methods to evaluate current prescribing practice, indication documentation, and the use of a new indication-based, patient-specific prescribing tool. Calandra has recently published her systematic review and narrative synthesis in the BMJ Quality and Safety Journal. As a former paediatric intensive care nurse, Calandra seeks to improve the translation of research into improvements in clinical practice at the bedside.
Alice Gregory
Designer
Alice is a designer working on a variety of projects at Helix bringing a practical approach to user centred design. She is working with Sussex Integrated Care System on developments to their shared care record and with the London Office for Technology and Innovation on an intervention to reduce isolation amongst people living with dementia. Alice has also co-ordinated the Healthcare and Design Masters module run by Helix for students at RCA & Imperial. Prior to joining Helix Alice worked at the BBC, designing digital tools for content creators and experiences for audiences that help them find the most interesting things within the BBC for them.Alice studied BSc Product Design and Management, culminating in the design of a Mascara package that does not rely on vision in order to apply cosmetics.
Matthew Harrison
Senior Designer
Matthew is a theme lead and Senior Designer, and the Human-Centred Design Lead in the UK DRI Care Research & Technology Centre (CR&T). He brings over a decade of experience in conducting participatory design projects in challenging areas of healthcare, including a clinical task management platform (bought by Google DeepMind), an Advance Care Planning Platform (SBRI Healthcare), the ReSPECT process (used throughout UK), and an emergency paediatric clinical decision support tool (Dosium). Since 2019, he has focussed on designing with people affected by dementia. He works across CR&T to bring public and participant input into the development of software interfaces and devices from Imperial's labs. During the pandemic he developed techniques to co-design with participants online, resulting in Community Makers, and a LOTI funded project.
Sophie Horrocks
Designer
Sophie is a human-centred designer and researcher focused on intuitive and inclusive design of products and services to improve quality of life. She has worked and studied internationally across UK, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York, bringing a global perspective to social design challenges. Previous experience has led her to work with clients including Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Kering, Design Trust and exhibiting works at Salone del Mobile and London Craft Week. Sophie worked on third-sector projects across these locations, bringing a sensitivity towards local culture and community to her design approach. She holds an MA/MSc in Global Innovation Design from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.
Damion Lambert
Software Developer
Damion has been working in the Healthcare sector for over 17 years working with Business Intelligence Systems for the Pharmaceutical industry and data support systems for NHS clients. He has worked designing and implementing local UK and Global solutions specialising in database design and management and analytical front-end development. More recently after completing an MSc in Computer Vision, Robotics and ML, he migrated to healthcare research systems, working with the UK Dementia Research Institute based at the Surrey Sleep Research Centre and the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) at the of the University of Surrey. In this role he worked closely with the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London implementing Software Systems and Healthcare Device Integration.
Ahmed Latif
Clinical Research Fellow
Ahmed is a Surgical Registrar sub-specialising in Oncoplastic Breast Surgery. Coming towards the end of his surgical training, he has taken time out for research and is completing a PhD at the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI), Imperial College London. His PhD focuses on the use of Wearable Technology in rehabilitation. He is working as part of the OnTrack team on the use of Wearable Technology in neurorehabilitation post stroke and post-operative upper limb rehabilitation for Breast Cancer patients undergoing axillary surgery.
Anna Lawrence-Jones
PPIE Lead
Anna is the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead at the Institute of Global Health Innovation. Anna works across the IGHI (including the NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC), the Helix Centre for Design and the Centre for Health Policy) to support the meaningful involvement of patients, carers and public in research. Anna sits in the Design Strategy Team (DST), who also work in a cross-cutting way with researchers, clinicians and patients across the IGHI. Anna and the DST are looking to engage and involve the public in innovative ways around complex topics including data sharing (www.datacanofworms) and hearing loss (www.hearingbirdsong.com).
Clare McCrudden
Policy Fellow
Clare is a qualified Social Worker with professional experience working in both hospital and community care settings. Clare works in behavioural science as part of Change Lab, as well as within product innovation at Helix. Clare was previously PPIE Lead (maternity cover) at Helix and is experienced in managing Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) through interagency working between the NHS and charity sector. Clare completed a MSc in Global Health at Maastricht University, and led an evidence-informed public health project in Bogotá, Colombia. Clare works in a cross-cutting way in partnership with researchers, clinicians and patients. Clare is passionate about a holistic, person-centred and social justice approach to health.
Fiona O'Driscoll
Policy Fellow
Fiona is a qualified doctor from Trinity College Dublin with a background in management consulting who brings this unique combination of experience to her role as Data Health Policy Fellow, always ensuring that the patient is at the centre of all the work that she does. Prior to joining the Helix Centre, Fiona worked at Accenture on a broad range of projects with public and private sector healthcare clients. Fiona is currently completing a MSc in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Brian Quan
Senior Software Engineer
Brian works with clinicians and designers to build products across mobile, desktop and server-side. He has gained lead development experience in both start up companies and larger organisations, and has a particular interest in applications that seamlessly integrate sensor and wearable data to provide a great user experience. Brian strongly believes that technology can change human life for the better.
Madeline Tatum
Researcher
Madeline is a researcher on the Healthy Aging project at the Helix Centre. She recently graduated from the University of Oxford's Translational Health Science MSc where she focused on how to integrate patient, carer, and clinician voices into the research funding process. Most recently, she collaborated with the NHS and the University of Oxford to measure the impact of arts interventions on older adult populations. The majority of Madeline's work has been in the public health sector, centring on overdose prevention and mental health promotion. Madeline is interested in how multi-sector collaborations can bring about effective, person-centric healthcare.
Ivor Williams
Senior Designer
Ivor is a designer, developing new ways of thinking about and experiencing death and dying in the 21st century. His expertise includes design research, communication and product design. He leads the end-of-life care project at the Helix Centre, and co-founded the first Helix Centre spin-out venture, Digital Care Planning. He co-leads the development of Cove, a flagship mental health app available on the NHS, with his social tech company Humane Engineering. He is visiting lecturer at Imperial College London, and was visiting professor of Information Design at the University of Venice from 2014–2016. Prior to joining Helix, Ivor was an art director at Tellart and studio director at the Italian research centre, Fabrica.
Helix Associates
Our extended team of Helix associates provide a broad range of skills and expertise to support our projects.
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Dr. Nicholas Appelbaum
Ascociate
Nicholas is a South African trained clinician with a surgical and global health background, and a Clinical Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London. He leads a Dosium, a Helix Centre spin out. As a Resuscitation Council (UK) Fellow he led our NIHR-funded project building decision support tools for the frontline in paediatric emergency medicine. Nicholas has a particular interest in frugal innovation and the provision of quality care in lower middle income countries and worked in multiple peri-urban clinics and hospitals in South Africa prior to joining Imperial.
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Jonathan Clarke
Clinical Research Fellow (Dosium)
Jonathan is a General Surgeon and Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London. He Is completing a PhD applying the mathematics of complex systems to understand how healthcare delivery in the NHS may be more efficient and equitable. Jonathan collaborates with Helix in the development of clinical decision support systems, particularly in paediatric drug safety. He holds a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University where he was a Kennedy Scholar.
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Ella Gibbs
Clinical Advisor
Ella is a physiotherapist with a specific interest in neurological rehabilitation. She is providing advice and support to the Helix Centre on a stroke rehabilitation project aimed at enhancing arm recovery. Ella's main interests lie in improving patient outcomes and staff efficiency. She has experience of delivering therapy in the public and private sector in both acute and community settings. She is currently doing a MSc in Health Policy at Imperial College London.
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Kate Grailey
Academic Research Lead
Kate is the Academic Research Lead for the Helix Centre and the Centre for Health Policy at the Institute of Global Health Innovation. In this role she provides academic support to projects across the Helix Centre. With a clinical background as an Anaesthestist and a PhD exploring psychological safety, stress and resilience in healthcare teams, her research interests lie in addressing healthcare safety and strategic challenges by understanding human behaviour and how behavioural science can be applied to help solve these challenges. Kate has an extensive background in qualitative and mixed research methodology, and in developing and testing behavioural science informed interventions in the healthcare setting. She works within the Change Lab, a collaboration between Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Imperial College London and the Behavioural Insights Team, and her research is currently focused upon how we can understand and address behaviours contributing to the antimicrobial resistance crisis.
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Sarah Huf
Director, The Change Lab
Sarah Huf is the founder and director of The Change Lab, a collaboration between Imperial College Health NHS trust, Imperial College London and The Behavioural Insights Team. Sarah is a clinical lecturer in behavioural economics at Imperial College and a breast cancer surgeon. Her PhD is in the use of behavioural economics to improve engagement with cancer screening programmes in the NHS. Sarah was awarded a Harkness fellowship in healthcare policy and practice, which she spent at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarah has extensive experience in embedding pragmatic randomised controlled trials on the healthcare frontline both in the UK and the US, which rigorously test clinician-, patient- and public-facing behavioural interventions to inform healthcare policy.
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Lenny Naar
Associate
Formally trained as a graphic and communication designer, Lenny has devoted his career to genuinely understanding people and using design to make their lives better. Lenny established the Design Strategy Team at Helix, an interdisciplinary team who leverage human centred design methods to support health system stakeholders and researchers address all sorts of unique problems beyond a product focus. In addition to working with numerous design consultancies prior to joining Helix in 2015, Lenny worked inside a major U.S. health insurance company on population health management tools to support value-based care.
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Deborah Szebeko
Associate
Deborah founded thinkpublic in 2004 after volunteering at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, where she spotted the opportunity to use design to improve the patient experience and healthcare services. She was an early pioneer of co-design and user engagement, speaking at international events, writing publications on innovative service design methods, she’s won a wide range of design and social entrepreneurship awards for her work. Deborah has experience of designing and launching social ventures/services for global health-tech and pharma businesses, charities and the public sector. She is also a holistic health practitioner and runs immersive wellbeing events to inspire creativity, thoughtful leadership and improve mental wellbeing for communities and organisations.
Work with us
Visit our Join Us page to view current openings with the Helix Team.