Richard Stubbs

Richard Stubbs is Chief Executive of Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, working with the NHS, academic partners, and health innovators to support the transformation of health and care delivery through innovation. Richard is also Chair of the national Health Innovation Network, bringing together all 15 health innovation networks across England to deliver national impact.

Richard has an established track record of bringing together sectors and regions to accelerate the role that technology and life sciences can play in improving patient care, whilst also championing how increasing economic growth contributes to better population health outcomes for communities. In addition to his role as Chief Executive of Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber and Chair of the Health Innovation Network, he holds several varied non-executive and voluntary roles.

As a long-standing member of the NHS Assembly, a board member of NHS England’s Accelerated Access Collaborative, a member of the NIHR Strategy and Engagement Board and the Innovation Ecosystem Programme Advisory Group, Richard is passionate about driving policy level changes which will best enable the NHS to adopt innovation for the benefit of patient care, in addition to developing a clear blueprint for how the NHS can best support, and benefit from, a strong life sciences ecosystem.

In 2022, Richard created the new national Innovate Awards to recognise and reward health innovators across the NHS and industry, in partnership with the NHS Confederation.

He is a fellow of the Sciana Health Leaders’ Network, a programme which brings senior leaders with diverse professional backgrounds from across Europe together to share the skills and knowledge needed to make change happen in complex systems and address current and future challenges facing leaders in health and healthcare.

Internationally, Richard is a member of the International Health Federation’s Global Scientific Committee which curates their annual World Hospital Congress. He is also an advisor to Healthcare UK, providing strategic input into the UK Department for Business and International Trade’s healthcare export activity.

Commitment to diversity and inclusion runs through everything Richard does, and he has twice been recognised by the Health Service Journal in their Top 50 BAME Powerlist as “one of the BAME figures exercising the most power and influence in English health policy.” As Co-Chair of the NHS Confederation’s BME Leadership Network he plays a central role in increasing diversity within NHS leadership. Richard is passionate about the importance of greater diversity within innovation and has conceived a national programme which seeks to address this issue, this work led to a series of pledges which have been adopted nationally by the health innovation networks. He is also featured on the D-list, a diverse directory of UK entrepreneurs.

Proud of his Yorkshire roots, Richard undertakes a variety of roles focused on developing the region as a great place to live and work. He has recently been appointed as an Ambassador at Sheffield Hospitals Charity, focusing on maximising technology, research and innovation to improve the lives of people across the region. He is the former chair of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority Local Enterprise Partnership, a business-led regional function responsible for local economic development. He is currently a board member of the NP11 and the South Yorkshire Mayoral Economic Advisory Council.

Richard is an Honorary Professor at Sheffield Hallam University and chairs the advisory board for their Advanced Wellness Research Centre (AWRC), a £14m research institution established to develop innovations that will improve population health and physical activity and is a visiting fellow at the university. He is also Chair of the NIHR HRC in Paediatrics and Child Health Steering Committee, the only dedicated paediatric NIHR HRC.

Richard is a vocal proponent of tackling health inequalities. In 2020 he co-authored the influential report, Levelling Up Yorkshire and Humber; Health as the new wealth post-COVID on the link between regional productivity and population health, going on to present the report’s recommendations at the House of Lords Public Services Committee. The second white paper ‘Empowering local places for health and prosperity: new perspectives from Yorkshire and Humber’ was published in February 2024. Working with the thinktank Public Policy Projects, Richard led on a report entitled The Digital Divide: reducing inequalities for better health, which focuses on what digital health can do for underserved populations.

In Autumn 2021 Richard was recognised as Business Leader of the Year in the Yorkshire Post’s prestigious Excellence in Business Awards. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Leadership Fellow of St George’s House, Windsor Castle. He is also a member of Maltby Learning Trust, a multi-academy trust of secondary and primary schools across Rotherham and Doncaster. In his spare time, he manages an under 13’s football team.

Richard lives in Sheffield with his wife and two children.