Professional Background
Helen is an Electro-Mechanical Power Engineer with over 20 years’ experience in both academia and industry.  Helen founded The Care Machine Ltd in 2018 , a consultancy company that provides innovative technology solutions, business management and training to medtech and healthcare start-ups, SMEs and Researchers. She was also responsible for recruiting over 1000 engineers to support the NHS Clinical Engineering services at Nightingale hospitals across the UK at the start of the Covid outbreak.

Engineering Better Care
Helen is a Co-founder of the Engineering Better Care Academy, designed to extend the reach of the EBC Toolkit with co-founder Angela Hobbs.

"Engineering Better Care describes the development of a systems approach to health and care design and continuous improvement, taking inspiration from both the healthcare and engineering sectors. It takes a broad view of systems (or systems of systems) as a set of elements that include people, processes, information, organisations and services, as well as software, hardware and other systems that, when combined, have qualities that are not present in any of the elements themselves"

Early Career
Helen studied for her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Loughborough University. Her early career was in the defence industry were she worked for a number of companies including Babcock International and GE Naval.  She joined the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2013 as a Policy Manager firstly as Head of Engineering in Society and then as Head of Healthcare Policy, managing all aspects of the Institution’s medical technology and Healthcare output.

Professional Commitments
She continues to deliver thought leadership across the medtech sector, championing the importance of biomedical, pharmaceutical and mechanical engineering in medicine. Helen has appeared on TV and radio as well as writing numerous reports and articles on healthtech-related matters.

She is the host of the IMechE’s engineering podcast, Impulse to Innovation and well as being Vice-Chair of the IMechE’s Biomedical Engineering Division and a member of the Healthcare Policy Topic Group at the Royal Academy of Engineering.