Meet the Team

Ruth Poole

Chief Executive Officer

Ruth is a clinical nurse by background, proudly delivering patient care as a cancer nurse specialist. Wanting to have a wider impact on healthcare, Ruth became Group Commercial Director at Healthcare at Home, a start-up which enabled people with long term health conditions to undergo treatment at home rather than in hospital. She was responsible for driving the growth of the start-up business from a team of four with just one patient, up to 2,000 staff with over 150,000 patients and an established part of the health delivery system.

In 2016, Ruth became Director of Speciality at Celesio UK. She was responsible for growing the speciality services that support an integrated NHS including clinical homecare, hospital and community services. Ruth led the company’s relationships with NHS leaders, commissioners and pharmaceutical companies, developing new solutions and new models of care in today’s healthcare system.

Looking for a new challenge, Ruth joined Preventx as CEO in 2020.

As well as her role as CEO, Ruth is also Chair of the NHS Confederation’s Subsidiary Board.

Dr Vanessa Apea

Medical Director

Dr Vanessa Apea is a highly experienced sexual health clinician, researcher and speaker. Since 2011, Vanessa has been a consultant physician in Genito-urinary and HIV medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust, and clinical lead for five of those years. She is an Honorary Senior Lecturer and the deputy academic lead for equality, diversity and inclusion within Queen Mary University of London’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Vanessa is passionate about reducing inequalities in healthcare. She has made this a central focus of her clinical work and received an NHS 70 Windrush Award for her contribution to improving health equity. She has an established track record of exploring barriers to engagement in care in marginalised populations and has a particular research interest in participatory approaches and the intersection of race, gender and health.

She is a member of the London Fast-Track Cities Initiative stigma subgroup working to get London to zero HIV stigma. She is also the medical director of NAZ, a charity advocating for high quality sexual health and HIV support services for racially minoritised communities. Vanessa is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University.

Dr John White

Medical Director

Dr John White brings over 25 years’ clinical experience within sexual health, having been an NHS consultant in Genitourinary Medicine since 2004, including 13 years at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, London. John is currently working in the Western and Northern Health & Social Care Trusts, Northern Ireland, a role he will maintain while also working for Preventx.

From 2009 to 2020, John was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of STD & AIDS and has been a key opinion leader in this field for over a decade. He is a passionate educator and speaker and brings a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for clinical sexual health and HIV medicine. His major research and service developments have focussed on bacterial STIs and novel diagnostic approaches and this aligns well with the aspirations of Preventx.

Andy Burton

Chief Commercial Officer

Andy joined Preventx in July 2020 as Chief Commercial Officer to develop and deliver the company’s ambitious UK growth plan. Previously Andy held senior commercial roles at McKesson and Sciensus pioneering innovative out of hospital care models in partnership with the NHS and local authorities, including virtual wards, patient support services and community infusion clinics. He spent 5 years working at the Department of Health and Social Care on public/private partnership initiatives to help tackle elective waiting lists, and also advised the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia on their healthcare reform programme. Connect with Andy on LinkedIn.

Rich McLean

Chief Operational Officer

Rich joins Preventx in April 2023, with overall responsibility for Operations

Rich spent the first part of his career working in R&D for GSK and Pfizer. Starting as a lab scientist working at the bench to becoming a senior product and people leader responsible for developing pharmaceutical medicines from pre-clinical through full development to commercialisation.

Rich then went on to launching pharmaceutical sciences for the LGC Group, a global leader in the life science tools sector as a start up to a £10M+ business inside 2 years, going on to manage their global operations of over 1000 staff across 11 sites including responsibility for the biggest forensic testing group in the UK and sport and supplements testing in the US.

Having spent over 2 decades in science he was asked to lead and establish the European operations for Amazon, Alexa, scaling the organisation from scratch to over 3000 employees, successfully launching Alexa products in UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Rich then went on to lead the
Amazon project management and knowledge management divisions globally.

When his daughter was born in 2019, Rich stepped away from corporate life to spend time at home with his family. He kept himself busy establishing a science charity to encourage young people from
underserved areas and deprived backgrounds to be involved in STEM subjects this led to his involvement with schools and colleges across the East of England where he has developed curriculums to align with business strategy representing the education sector in local government.

The last few years Rich has been Chief Operating Officer / Interim CEO and has led the finance, IT and HR departments for Cambridge Healthcare Research consultants and the Global Pathogen Analysis Service linking Cambridge and Oxford Universities to tech initiatives in healthcare.

Rich’s passion is people and getting the best out of individuals and teams.

Nick Malhomme

International Development Director

Nick joined Preventx in 2020, leading the company’s international development activities and partnerships. He has over 15 years in senior roles international healthcare heading up business units in Brazil, India and the UK, for Optum, part of United Healthcare. He has also worked for one of the UK’s largest telemedicine companies and an online pharmacy leader in Spain and has implemented programmes and networks across the globe.

Susan Blackman

Group Human Resources Director

Susan joined Preventx in November 2022 as Group Human Resources Director to design and drive Preventx’s ambitious people agenda. Being the first Human Resource leader on the Executive team, Susan will utilise over 20 years’ experience in the Human Resource profession to ensure Preventx has a vision and roadmap for our people recruitment, retention and development. This will focus on the overall candidate and employee experience with specifics on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
Susan has experience across various sectors including Recruitment, Pharma, FMCG, Third Sector and HealthTech and has wroked across all elements of the employee lifecycle as well as leading successful HR and People related Transformation initiatives.

Tim Alston

Advisor to the Board

Tim’s passion in computing began at a young age. An early starter in electronics from wiring a plug at the age of 3 and writing code for his father’s Amstrad PCW and BBCs from around age 8, the desire to explore and learn has culminated in Tim being both passionate and highly skilled.

Tim graduated from The University of Sheffield with First-Class Honours in Computer Software Engineering (BEng) in 2005.

After graduating, Tim worked on a range of basic e-commerce projects for Neil Cooper. Together they established Preventx, as Tim saw great potential in the business and was keen to be part of its success.

Tim’s passion for the interface between electronics, computer systems and the internet has been instrumental in the development of Preventx’s systems. A keen interest in home automation and “the internet of things” has transferred well over to the businesses electronic and control processes.

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn