The system of innovation in the NHS

Chris, a former NHS CEO has worked as a senior consultant healthcare specialist with Healthcare UK based at the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) for the last eleven years. He is an experienced executive coach and mentor and has a passion for improving health and care worldwide.

Chris has worked with hundreds of NHS and commercial health and care organisations in the UK to take their export offer to operators, developers, investors, governments and health services in the target markets of India, China, SE Asia, the Middle East and other countries.  He has been responsible for the development of a detailed set of international UK offers, including digital health, NHS Innovation, clinical services (most recently diabetes, oncology, cardiac services and mental health), training and education and healthcare infrastructure.

Chris worked for 25 years as a senior leader in the NHS both in a NHS Trust and as a NHS commissioner. Chris also worked in a predecessor of NHS England (the NHS Executive) and in 2012 was seconded to the then Department of Health to develop NHS Global (which led to the creation of Healthcare UK).

Chris joined CW+ as Chief Executive in July 2016 and leads the charity to raise funds to provide new facilities, deliver our unique arts and health programme, and identify and embed next generation systems and technologies to support patients and staff. In addition to his charity role, Chris is strategic communications lead at the Trust and sits as a member of the Trust board.

Prior to CW+, Chris was Head of Major Gifts at the University of Cambridge and spent over ten years at Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. Chris is currently a Trustee of Newlife – The Charity for Disabled Children and sits on grants committees at the True Colours Trust and the National Institute for Health Research. 

Dr Kristin-Anne Rutter joined Cambridge University Health Partners as the organisation’s Executive Director with a remit to lead the vision for life sciences in Cambridge, harnessing the talent, expertise and potential of the city’s cluster to deliver breakthrough scientific discoveries and rapidly prove and scale these to improve healthcare outcomes for all. She is working collaboratively across the ecosystem to put in place the infrastructure, talent, funding and networks required to maintain Cambridge as a global destination for talent and investment.

Kristin-Anne now also leads the organisation formed by its current occupiers to develop the Cambridge Biomedical Campus currently the UK’s largest colocation of academic, charity, industrial and government funded lifescience research and healthcare delivery in the UK.

Previously as a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s London Office, she was unusual in working for both lifesciences companies and healthcare systems to improve performance.  She supported the UK government to identify opportunities to strengthen the UK Lifescience industry, accelerate the deployment of innovation in the NHS and better utilise healthcare data. 

Prior to joining McKinsey, Kristin-Anne worked as a doctor in Iceland, for Eli Lilly in manufacturing quality assurance and a start-up company in Australia bringing a treatment for Tinnitus to market. She is currently a Trustee and Board member of Marie Stopes International. 

Chris Wright has worked in the Scottish Government and NHS in Scotland for over seventeen years, focusing on the implantation, design and development of unique services and systems having been responsible for a number of initiatives and key developments in the field of mental health in Scotland.

During this time Chris has held a key role in more than 45 projects within the NHS at local, national and European levels focusing on technology, innovation and service delivery within the health and care settings. Chris is currently the National Advisor for Digital Mental Health and the Head of the Digital Mental Health Programme. In this role, Chris is nationally overseeing the development and implementation of a range of large scale digital mental health services across Scotland.