Guidance executive

Dr Sam Roberts is the chief executive of NICE.

Before joining us in February 2022, Sam was the managing director of health and care at Legal and General, a financial services firm. In this role, she had responsibility for identifying promising areas for investment across health and care.

Prior to that, Sam was the first chief executive of the Accelerated Access Collaborative. This is a national umbrella organisation for health innovation, hosted by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI).

She originally trained as a doctor and practiced medicine in South Africa, the UK, and Australia before undertaking an MBA. She then joined McKinsey and Company, where she worked in a wide range of industries before specialising in healthcare.

After McKinsey, Sam moved into the NHS as a senior manager at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She was also a director in UCLPartners, an Academic Health Sciences Centre and Network. Last year, she took on the role of director of innovation, research and life sciences at NHSEI.

Over the last 5 years Sam has become involved in research, working with health economic models to inform evidence-based policy at the London School of Economics. She then moved to the University of Oxford where she undertook a DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy).

Jonathan joined us in January 2023 as chief medical officer and from March 2023 will act as interim director of the centre for guidelines.

Prior to this he was the interim chief clinical information officer (CCIO) at NHS England (2022), the chief medical officer (CMO) of NHS Digital (2019 to 2022), and the national clinical director for urgent and emergency care at NHS England (2013 to 2019).

In his clinical work, Jonathan is a consultant in emergency medicine at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and also does regular shifts with the Great Western Air Ambulance, which he established as its first medical advisor between 2007 and 2011.

Jonathan is professor of emergency care in the school of health and social wellbeing at the University of the West of England, and a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) senior investigator. His main research interests relate to cardiac arrest, emergency and pre-hospital care, service organization and delivery, and design research.

Elaine joined us in September 2019 as the associate director for the resource impact assessment team. She was previously a chief finance officer within Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board, where she oversaw the finances for one of the acute hospitals in North Wales and also for managed clinical services across North Wales.

Elaine has extensive experience in finance within the NHS, having also worked for a large acute trust in England. Before working in the NHS, she worked for major international chemical companies and was heavily involved in the flotation of one of these companies on the US stock market.

Mark is our director of HealthTech. This includes diagnostics, digital and medtech that can be implantable or assistive. Mark has 30 years of experience in the medtech arena. He initially trained as a Clinical Physiologist, and worked for 10 years within the UK NHS, Tertiary Cardiac Care, with a specialist interest in complex cardiac devices.

Moving into Industry in 2001, holding various clinical and commercial roles. In parallel, he has held roles, including committee member on our technology appraisal programme. Is a past member of the External Advisory Board, University of Leeds EPSRC Centre for innovative Manufacturing of Medical Devices. Mark has also undertaken secondment within the UK Government, Office for Life science, Department of Business, as MedTech Policy Advisor. Since 2014 Mark was the Director of Health Economics and Commissioning for UK & Ireland at Medtronic.

Nick had a 20-year career in analytical science, process technology and general management in the chemical, pharmaceutical and contract laboratory industries prior to joining NICE in 2010. His initial role was to establish and manage the diagnostics assessment programme and he was later appointed programme director, scientific affairs. Nick currently oversees NICE’s science, evidence and analytics directorate.

He has broad scientific and policy interests relating to the evaluation of technologies and interventions to support the development of clinical, public health and social care guidance. His experience includes consideration of health technology assessment (HTA) issues arising from the availability of novel new products such as cell and gene therapies and work on methods issues relating to the evaluation of antimicrobials.

Nick was the NICE lead on a collaborative pilot project with NHS England to develop and test innovative models for the evaluation and purchase of antimicrobials. Nick also has interests around the alignment of regulatory and HTA processes and collaborates closely with national and international regulators.

Helen is the director of medicines evaluation at NICE.

Helen is responsible for designing and operating methods and systems to produce national guidance and other advice on medicines and other relevant therapies for the NHS in England. With an academic background in biochemistry and health economics, and over 20 years of experience in health technology assessment, she has extensive knowledge of the principles of evidence-based healthcare, methods and processes of health technology assessment and experience over a wide range of technologies and disease areas.