42 Technology expands healthcare team and development capabilities
The photo shows new joiners (from the left): Marta Uncio Ribera, Sarah Knight and Craig Townsend.
Craig Townsend has joined 42 Technology’s business development team as head of healthcare, and will take charge of its commercial development activities within the sector. He brings over 10 years of sales, marketing and consulting experience, with a particular focus in helping ambitious life sciences, healthcare and tech companies to take their ideas to market. His previous roles have included being CTO and VP business development at o2h Group, and director of sales and marketing at BioStrata, the life sciences marketing consultancy.
Sarah Knight has re-joined 42 Technology into a newly created role as head of healthcare technology to lead the consultancy’s engineering group that specialises in medical device development. She previously worked at 42 Technology for six years earlier in her career. Before taking up her latest role Sarah was a senior mechanical engineer at CMR Surgical, developing instruments and consumables for the Versius robotic surgery system. She has also been head of clinical engineering innovation at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Marta Uncio Ribera has joined 42 Technology’s healthcare team as an engineering consultant with specific expertise in biomedical engineering. She has an MSc in biomechanics from Imperial College, London, where her research focused on the development of AI-adjusted prosthetic liners that adapt as a person’s needs change throughout the day.
“Marta, Sarah and Craig are all highly experienced in healthcare and life science technologies and markets, and will be instrumental in helping strengthen this increasingly important part of our business. Our recent healthcare successes have included designing and developing next-generation surgical instruments for use in some of the most challenging minimally-invasive procedures, and revolutionary point-of-care diagnostic systems for the developing world,” said Jon Spratley, managing director at 42 Technology.
“2021 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for us across all our business sectors. We have a strong pipeline of work, from long-term as well as several new clients, and plan to create a number of new positions over the next few months.”
In addition to expanding the team, 42 Technology has created a restricted-access laboratory working to containment level 2 biosafety standards.
The new facility, which includes a microbiological safety cabinet, sterilisation and other equipment, will allow specially trained staff to test biological samples containing specific strains of pathogens involved in TB, malaria, Legionnaires' disease, and some STDs. These samples can now be processed in-house to better inform the development of new disease diagnostics, while helping to reduce development timescales, costs and time to market.