Individuals collaborating for change

Arash joined Orthopaedic Research UK, previously known as the Furlong Research Charitable Foundation, in 2008 and was appointed Chief Executive in 2016. Over the years he has been instrumental in the strategic development and rebranding of the organisation, with a focus on improving governance and expanding the research and education programmes within the charity.

He is an agile leader by nature and has a strong desire to develop strategic partnerships within the MSK community to accelerate innovation and maximise impact in society. Arash has a PhD in Medical Engineering, MBA in Management and is a trustee at British Orthopaedic Research Society (BORS).

I qualified as a physiotherapist at Kings’ College Hospital in 1985. After completing my PhD at University College London and Kings College London I held appointments of was Lecturer, Reader and Professor at Kings College London between 1990-2010. In 2010 I moved to the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at St George’s University of London

I was a Clinical Advisor to Arthritis Research UK (2002-2008), Chair of Chartered Society of Physiotherapy’s Research and Clinical Effectiveness (2001-2004) and have contributed to several national working groups, clinical guideline committee and conferences. Since 2013 I have been seconded to the Health Innovation Network (South London’s Academic Health Science Network) as Clinical Director for the Musculoskeletal Programme, promoting best practice for people with musculoskeletal conditions. In 2017 was awarded an NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellowship.

A major part of my work was the development and evaluation of ESCAPE-pain – a rehabilitation programme to help people with knee and/or hip osteoarthritis (www.escape-pain.org). The programme has won recognition from many health and wellbeing agencies including the NHS England, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Public Health England, Arthritis Research UK. It is currently being rolled out across the UK, and is now being delivered in over 294 clinical and community centres across the UK. ESCAPE-pain won the 2020 Health Services Journal Musculoskeletal Programme of the Year.

I have (co-)authored more than 80 papers.

Robin joined ORUK in 2021 as its Data Protection Officer. Previously trained as a lawyer in the public sector, Robin now specialises in data protection, data privacy and information governance. Robin is employed by a consultancy firm, Information Governance Services (IGS). Robin and IGS pride themselves on providing personal and professional services to their clients and helping them align their aspirations and ideas in line with data protection law. Robin greatly enjoys working with charities and is excited to work with ORUK and provide them with the necessary data protection advice and guidance required.

Catherine is a chartered accountant and has nearly 14 years of experience dealing with company accounts and audits for small to medium sized owner managed businesses. She also specialises in charity accounts and solicitors accounts rules audits. She has been involved with ORUK’s account since 2015 and became CFO in 2019.

She is an honours graduate in History from Royal Holloway.  She is married and has two children, who keep her busy in her free time.

Ruth is responsible for the growth, management and delivery of ORUK’s educational activities.

Since joining ORUK in November 2015, she has developed an ever-growing programme of educational events that meet the professional training and CPD requirements of those working within orthopaedic sciences. She is also responsible for corporate partner engagement, and devising our newsletter.

Ruth has been delivering events for over 12 years, previously working for both the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) and the British Institute of Radiology (BIR).

She is passionate about making a meaningful difference to the lives of patients, and regularly takes part in our charity challenge events which raise money to support orthopaedic research.

Debbie is passionate about keeping people at the heart of what we do as an organisation and works with a fantastically supportive and friendly group of people in a vibrant and energetic environment.

During her early career, she had several roles in the healthcare and education sector, with commercial and not-for-profit organisations.

Debbie works closely with the Board of Trustees ensuring that all governance and services are not only effective, but value for money. She has had an association with the Charity for over 20 years initially working with the founding surgeon, Mr Furlong, and has undertaken various roles within ORUK; witnessing the Charity’s vision and values grow from strength to strength believing strongly that changes are best delivered in partnership.

Martin is a marketing consultant and business author. He has worked in all areas of the marketing communications industry including leadership positions in advertising, PR and media. He has been involved in planning highly successful marketing communications campaigns throughout his career including consumer health education programmes. Much of his work is focused on helping organisations respond to the opportunities and challenges posed by digital media. He has written three books on this topic, including The Financial Times Guide to Social Media Strategy.

Dr Cat Ball is Head of Policy at the Association of Medical Research Charities, the UK’s membership body for health and medical research charities. She leads on the development of policy positions with the ultimate aim to ensure the best possible environment for charities to fund research in the UK. She works across a range of policy areas and has a particular passion for supporting charities to develop new ways of funding, including ‘passion capital’ approaches where the drive and mission-focus of a charity is combined with an investment strategy.

Cat has previously worked in policy roles in the House of Lords and Learned Societies and has advised the Scottish Funding Council on research funding strategy. Cat has a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford.

Peter Harrison is Managing Director, Siemens Healthineers with responsibility for business in the UK and Ireland.

He is the current chair of AXREM, (the Association of Healthcare Technology Providers for Imaging, Radiotherapy and Care), and served a previous term as chair in 2007-8.  He is a trustee of the British Institute of Radiology and Orthopaedic Research UK and has previously served as the Industry Representative on the Clinical Radiology Faculty Board of the Royal College of Radiologists.  Peter has also served as a Non-Executive Board member of an NHS Mental Health Foundation Trust.

Sarah Harkness has a background in corporate finance and investment banking, having spent fifteen years at NatWest Investment Bank and then four years as a Partner in Arthur Andersen. She has held a variety of Non-executive Director and Trustee roles in public and private companies primarily in the health and education sectors, including six years as a non-executive director of JRI Orthopaedics. Most recently she served as a non-executive director on the Board of NHS Improvement and as Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the Audit Committee of the University of Sheffield. She is currently a trustee of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and a School Governor.

Martin Gouldstone is Chief Business Officer at Sensyne Health Lifesciences, helping to drive organic and inorganic growth for this ethically inspired clinical stage AI business, turning access to proprietary patient data into actionable insights for both caregivers and the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Particular focus on expanding our reach and access in the US market and global Pharmaceutical sector.
His 30-year Industry career has spanned research into genetic fingerprinting, clinical research across Pharmaceuticals, Devices and CROs, and lead commercial roles across several platform drug discovery businesses. During this period he focused mainly in oncology and inflammation, signing early-stage licensing and partnership deals with Genentech, Biovitrum and Novo Nordisk, among others.
As well as his scientific and licensing career Martin has spent 7 years in Corporate Finance specialising in M&A, fundraising, disposals and spin outs. He brings all of this experience to his role at Sensyne Health, where he is working across the commercialisation of a unique access model to proprietary patient data and looking for inorganic growth opportunities to further scale the business.

Keith is a retired consultant orthopaedic surgeon previously employed at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital 1978-2012. He trained at Charing Cross Hospital medical school, Addenbrookes Hospital and the Pott Orthopaedic Rotation. He gained the “A” Merit award, Hon and was a senior registrar on the RNOH Shoulder unit.

He is Chairman of ODEP (Orthopaedic Data Evaluation Panel) and the “Beyond Compliance advisory group”, a member of the NJR Implant performance committee and Hon. Fellow British Orthopaedic Association.

He has authored and co-authored numerous orthopaedic papers, in paediatric and adult orthopaedics, and chapters in books.

Keith runs a small farm including sheep, haymaking, growing cricket bat willows and manages a small deciduous woodland.

Neil Rushton is Emeritus Professor of Orthopaedics in the University of Cambridge and Emeritus Fellow of Magdalene College. He trained at The Middlesex Hospital and became a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1975. He was awarded a Hunterian Professorship (RCS) for his work on the failure of joint replacements. He is also a Watson Jones medallist. He founded the Orthopaedic Research Unit in Cambridge that specialised in the tissue response to implanted material and tissue repair. He was first to recognise the role of polyethylene wear products in the failure of joint replacements and the first to use radionuclide scanning in the investigation of hip joint failure. He has more than 200 peer reviewed papers. He has supervised more than 30 PhD students and many MD students.

He has been a trustee (Wishbone) or chairman (Joint Action) of a number of orthopaedic charities. He was President of The European Orthopaedic Research Society and has been on the scientific advisory panels of a number of grant awarding bodies and orthopaedic manufacturers.

He is a  Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and was awarded The Chapman Medal for his development of a successful, CE marked, hip prosthesis that matched the modulus of bone.

He has given many invited lectures and has been active in TV and instructional videos.

Mr. Reilly studied medicine at St. Mary’s (Imperial) and qualified in 1994, (Hepburn Memorial Prize). He completed basic surgical training in Reading and Oxford passing the FRCS in 1998.  As a higher surgical trainee on the North West Thames program he was awarded the Robert Jones Prize and BOA medal. He submitted an MS thesis in “rotator cuff tears” in 2003 and passed the FRCS (orth) in 2004. He undertook a Fellowship year in shoulder and elbow surgery at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford prior to appointment as a Consultant in 2005.  He was selected as British Elbow and Shoulder Society European Travelling Fellow 2006.

Mr. Reilly’s main area of clinical practice is shoulder and elbow surgery, with research interests complementing this including rotator cuff disease, proximal humeral fractures and arthroplasty.

Catriona is an applied health researcher based in York Trials Unit. She has a long-standing interest in the evaluation of complex interventions, most recently evaluation of surgical interventions. She has worked in health technology assessment since 2002 and has undertaken health technology assessments of pharmacological, behavioural, surgical and policy interventions. She has experience in leading systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials, feasibility studies and mixed methods studies.

She is the Academic Lead for the North and East Yorkshire spoke of the Research Design Service Yorkshire and Humber (RDS-YH).

Eileen Gentleman is a Reader in the Centre for Craniofacial and Regenerative Biology at King’s College London. She joined Imperial College London in 2005 as post-doctoral research associate (Stevens Group) after completing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering (Tulane University, USA). In 2011, she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship and moved to King’s where her research focuses on developing biomaterials to modulate the physical and biological properties of the 3D cell niche to control stem cell differentiation for tissue engineering and disease modelling. Her work has been published in Nature Materials, Nature Biomedical Engineering, PNAS, and Biomaterials. Eileen has received funding awards from the Wellcome Trust, the MRC, the Rosetrees Trust, the Royal Society, and Orthopaedic Research UK, and is a recipient of both a Wellcome Image Award (2016) and an MIT Koch Institute Image Award (2016). The Orthopaedic Research Society named her as a finalist for their New Investigator Recognition Award (2010) and in 2013 her work in regenerative medicine was recognised with a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize.

My long-term vision is to innovate upper-limb prosthetic solutions that users would find fit for purpose. Specifically, I aim to approximate natural hand function and reduce the rate of prosthesis abandonment.

My clinical and research expertise is in cartilage assessment, stem cell regenerative medicine, early arthritis and joint preserving surgery and advanced bespoke joint replacement. I completed Orthopaedic Training in London, and advanced fellowships in Knee and Hip Surgery in Sydney and London. I worked as a Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeon and a Clinician Scientist in Edinburgh for eight years prior to moving to Manchester to become Academic Head of the Department of Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgery.

In 2010 I was selected to represent the UK on the prestigious ABC Fellowship, where I toured the top centres in Canada and America for an educational exchange. Other awards include NRS Clinician Scientist Award, BASK Travelling Fellowship Award, Best paper at the British Orthopaedic Research Society, Presidents Prize Paper at the Royal Society of Medicine, The William Little Medal (twice) and I have been peer-selected as one of the top 15 cartilage repair surgeons in the world to attend research summits on advancing the science and surgery of cartilage repair. I was Orthopaedic Tutor of the Year twice at Edinburgh University.

I have been recognised as a leader in the field with Senior Fellowship status of the International Cartilage Repair Society.

I currently serve on the Executive of The British Association for Surgery of the Knee as Treasurer, The Board of the ICRS and Chair the International Cartilage Repair Society Registry and The British Orthopaedic Association Research Committee. I am a Clinician Advisor to NICE and review grant awards and research manuscripts for 15 different institutions.

I have published over 100 scientific research papers and books, including authorship in the latest edition of Grays Anatomy. I have supervised many higher degree students.

I prioritise the best evidence-based care of my patients with the latest research-proven treatments.

Martin Gouldstone is Chief Business Officer at Sensyne Health Lifesciences, helping to drive organic and inorganic growth for this ethically inspired clinical stage AI business, turning access to proprietary patient data into actionable insights for both caregivers and the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Particular focus on expanding our reach and access in the US market and global Pharmaceutical sector.
His 30-year Industry career has spanned research into genetic fingerprinting, clinical research across Pharmaceuticals, Devices and CROs, and lead commercial roles across several platform drug discovery businesses. During this period he focused mainly in oncology and inflammation, signing early-stage licensing and partnership deals with Genentech, Biovitrum and Novo Nordisk, among others.
As well as his scientific and licensing career Martin has spent 7 years in Corporate Finance specialising in M&A, fundraising, disposals and spin outs. He brings all of this experience to his role at Sensyne Health, where he is working across the commercialisation of a unique access model to proprietary patient data and looking for inorganic growth opportunities to further scale the business.

Keith is a retired consultant orthopaedic surgeon previously employed at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital 1978-2012. He trained at Charing Cross Hospital medical school, Addenbrookes Hospital and the Pott Orthopaedic Rotation. He gained the “A” Merit award, Hon and was a senior registrar on the RNOH Shoulder unit.

He is Chairman of ODEP (Orthopaedic Data Evaluation Panel) and the “Beyond Compliance advisory group”, a member of the NJR Implant performance committee and Hon. Fellow British Orthopaedic Association.

He has authored and co-authored numerous orthopaedic papers, in paediatric and adult orthopaedics, and chapters in books.

Keith runs a small farm including sheep, haymaking, growing cricket bat willows and manages a small deciduous woodland.

Dr Cat Ball is Head of Policy at the Association of Medical Research Charities, the UK’s membership body for health and medical research charities. She leads on the development of policy positions with the ultimate aim to ensure the best possible environment for charities to fund research in the UK. She works across a range of policy areas and has a particular passion for supporting charities to develop new ways of funding, including ‘passion capital’ approaches where the drive and mission-focus of a charity is combined with an investment strategy.

Cat has previously worked in policy roles in the House of Lords and Learned Societies and has advised the Scottish Funding Council on research funding strategy. Cat has a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford.

Neil Rushton is Emeritus Professor of Orthopaedics in the University of Cambridge and Emeritus Fellow of Magdalene College. He trained at The Middlesex Hospital and became a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1975. He was awarded a Hunterian Professorship (RCS) for his work on the failure of joint replacements. He is also a Watson Jones medallist. He founded the Orthopaedic Research Unit in Cambridge that specialised in the tissue response to implanted material and tissue repair. He was first to recognise the role of polyethylene wear products in the failure of joint replacements and the first to use radionuclide scanning in the investigation of hip joint failure. He has more than 200 peer reviewed papers. He has supervised more than 30 PhD students and many MD students.

He has been a trustee (Wishbone) or chairman (Joint Action) of a number of orthopaedic charities. He was President of The European Orthopaedic Research Society and has been on the scientific advisory panels of a number of grant awarding bodies and orthopaedic manufacturers.

He is a  Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and was awarded The Chapman Medal for his development of a successful, CE marked, hip prosthesis that matched the modulus of bone.

He has given many invited lectures and has been active in TV and instructional videos.

Peter Harrison is Managing Director, Siemens Healthineers with responsibility for business in the UK and Ireland.

He is the current chair of AXREM, (the Association of Healthcare Technology Providers for Imaging, Radiotherapy and Care), and served a previous term as chair in 2007-8.  He is a trustee of the British Institute of Radiology and Orthopaedic Research UK and has previously served as the Industry Representative on the Clinical Radiology Faculty Board of the Royal College of Radiologists.  Peter has also served as a Non-Executive Board member of an NHS Mental Health Foundation Trust.

Sarah Harkness has a background in corporate finance and investment banking, having spent fifteen years at NatWest Investment Bank and then four years as a Partner in Arthur Andersen. She has held a variety of Non-executive Director and Trustee roles in public and private companies primarily in the health and education sectors, including six years as a non-executive director of JRI Orthopaedics. Most recently she served as a non-executive director on the Board of NHS Improvement and as Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the Audit Committee of the University of Sheffield. She is currently a trustee of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and a School Governor.

Adrian Downing advises private, public and charitable healthcare organisations in achieving their growth potential. Over the last twenty-five years he has worked with businesses ranging in size from 2 to 25,000 employees, across multiple industries, helping them to develop and deliver their commercial strategies and resolve operational issues.

He has held a number of commercial Executive and Non-Executive positions in healthcare including Nuffield Health and Benenden Hospital. He is a mentor on the NHS Innovation Accelerator programme and a Non Executive at Toolshed, supporting adolescents gain basic education and construction skills.

Adrian joined the Board of Trustees in November 2019.