Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence - Durham University Business School

Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence

Prof. Helen Meese PhD CEng MIMechE MIPEM MWES FRSA

Founder & CEO, The Care Machine Ltd.

Helen is an award-winning Electro-Mechanical Power Engineer with over 20 years’ experience in both academia and industry. She studied for her degree and PhD at Loughborough University. Her early career was in the defence industry where 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, managing all aspects of the Institution’s medical technology and Healthcare output.

Helen founded The Care Machine Ltd in 2018 to provide innovative technology solutions, business management and training to medtech start-ups, SMEs and Researchers. She is passionate about ensuring that technology is at the forefront of healthcare provision and has worked with a number of leading universities and companies to develop medtech products and services. Helen has several high-profile clients including the NHS, where she was 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. Helen continues to provide 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 health tech-related matters. Helen is a chartered engineer and member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Institute of Physics & Engineering in Medicine, the Women’s Engineering Society and is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. She is the host of the IMechE’s engineering podcast, Impulse to Innovation and well as being Chair of the IMechE’s Biomedical Engineering Division and past Trustee. She is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Durham University Business School, a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Healthcare Policy Topic Group, Vice-Chair of the SBRI healthcare competition funding panel and a Health Foundation Q-Community member.