Who We Are
Board of Directors
Gary Luke – Managing Director
Gary graduated with a Computer Science Degree in 1984 and embarked on a successful career in the IT industry with organisations such as AT&T.
Gary has a wealth of industry experience and expertise in large–scale systems development, implementation and support.
As Technical Director, Gary was instrumental in the management buy-out of Acuity Healthcare in 1998 that led to the creation of ARDENTIA in 1999.
In 2002 Gary became the Managing Director of ARDENTIA and has developed and managed the business, which has grown in staffing and turnover 4 fold during the period 2002–2004 and the plan is to continue this growth pattern over the next 3-5 years.
Tom Mulhern – Founder
Tom led the management buy–out of Acuity Healthcare in 1998 that led to the creation of ARDENTIA in 1999. Tom graduated in Business Studies and spent 10 years as an accountant with the NHS before making a career move into computer software and services. Tom went on to work with ICL, QaBS, AT&T and Acuity. With over 30 years experience of working in and with the NHS, Tom is a keen advocate of the importance of high quality information to support and improve systems and services in the NHS particularly the benefits of personalised information access and delivery. Tom is involved in a number of projects both in the UK and the Middle East based upon achieving cost effective and clinically effective delivery of care.
Ken Churchill – Business Development Director
Ken has responsibility for business development, helping to extend the company´s range of business solutions within the health and local government sectors. These solutions are delivered through Ardentia´s team of experienced consultants or through a growing set of strategic and alliance partners.
An Operational Research graduate, Ken worked for 11 years in the NHS within the West Midlands addressing planning and service delivery issues across the region. He subsequently worked as a managing consultant for AT&T on national projects within the NHS and for Acuity Healthcare for 8 years focusing on the delivery of information and its use by managers. He has over 25 years experience in IT and business intelligence solutions.
John Lucchese – Operations Director
John joined Ardentia at the beginning of May 2006 and is an experienced IS director with a proven track record of customer services delivery, professional services delivery, project management and IT product development to many of the UK’s leading health care, logistics and manufacturing organisations.
Prior to joining Ardentia, John held Customer Services Director and Technical Services Director positions with the Anisa Group delivering IT solutions to the logistics and latterly manufacturing sectors. The two previous years were as Operations Director with ACT Medisys (a Misys PLC subsidiary) delivering IS solutions primarily to the private healthcare sector, and prior to that, six years managing product development and as product manager with AT&T’s health care Systems business delivering health care systems to the NHS and MoD.
Before this John spent 18 years working directly with the NHS on a number of regional and national patient care systems. John is a Computer Sciences graduate.
The Sales Team
Steve Taylor – Sales & Marketing Manager
Steve Taylor joined Ardentia in June of 2010 as our Sales and Marketing Manager.
Steve has a strong background in both healthcare and IT working for 8 years as an IT manager in the NHS before joining Torex Health in 1999 as an account manager. Steve’s career has seen him work for several healthcare suppliers, amongst them, iSOFT, Dell and Sollis prior to joining the team at Ardentia in June 2010.
David Matlock – Territory Manager
David has over 31 years experience of working for and with the National Health Service. David spent 7 years as a Medical Physics technician followed by 4 years as a field service engineer and the last 20 years selling high value capital equipment.
He joined Ardentia in 2009 and is currently the Territory Manager for the North.
Beverley Lewis – Territory Manager
Bev is the Territory Manager for Yorkshire and Humber and East Midlands Strategic Health Authorities; being responsible for the account management of existing sites and the generation of new business in this Territory.
Having worked at Ardentia for almost five years, Bev started as the Customer Support Manager, moving to Head of Customer Care, before taking up her role as a Territory Manager in January 2010.
Bev has a strong Customer Service background having worked for two large National companies as both a Customer Service Manager for two years and a trainer for five years.
Mark Vizard - Territory Manager
Mark’s involvement in health informatics covers more than fifteen years. He began working in the Finance Office of Medway Health Authority before becoming a software trainer for a Primary Care software vendor. Mark has a Masters Degree in Distributed Computing Systems in 2001 and his work at Tata Consultancy Services, Fujitsu and Logica has given him substantial experience in Secondary Care Business Development.
Mark joined the Ardentia Sales Team in 2010 as a Territory Manager.
Gavin Stothart – Territory Manager
Gavin worked within the ICT industry for over 15 years. Focusing on the Public Sector for the majority of the time, he has engaged clients in all areas of IT infrastructure requirements including high availability servers, storage, networking, voice services, telephony, managed and support services. Before joining the Ardentia Sales Team in 2010, Gavin has worked with SCC, Fujitsu, BT (including BT Health) and Affiniti.
Gavin has a degree in Information Systems and is also an HP, EMC and Cisco accredited sales professional.
Martin Brammah - Sales & Marketing Support Consultant
Martin joined Ardentia at the end of November 2008, having recently completed a PhD in Behavioural Ecology. Since then, Martin has been both an Account Manager and Territory Manager for the East of England and South East Coast SHAs, building key business relationships and familiarising himself with Ardentia’s solutions and the benefits they deliver.
In June 2010, Martin took on the role of Sales & Marketing Support Consultant, acting as a lead generation engine for the Sales Team by managing marketing campaigns, corporate events and, more recently, the Ardentia website.
The Management Team
Phil Dodd – Delivery Manager
Phil is responsible for the delivery of Ardentia solutions to NHS Trusts and PCTs in Wales and the North of England. Prior to this he played a leading role in Ardentia’s contribution to the NWCS/SUS project. Phil has particular expertise in the design and implementation of patient-based systems and their use in satisfying the information needs of end-users for operational purposes and for service monitoring and planning.
Phil joined the team at Ardentia seven years ago and has over 25 years experience in patient and information systems.
Alex Hurley – Project Manager
Alex has twelve years industry experience in a variety of different roles within the software development and delivery environments.
Having worked for Ardentia for the past four years Alex manages a variety of customer deployment projects across all Ardentia solutions with a particular interest in the Ardentia NetTransform solution used for submitting Trust commissioning data to SUS.
Alex is qualified as a PRINCE2 Practitioner.
John Astley – Project Manager
John, one of Ardentia’s dedicated Project Managers, has been working in the IT industry since the late 1970s, beginning his career as an IBM Assembler (DOS) programmer before moving into application development and project management.
John joined Ardentia in July 2009 from SAS and has specialised in implementing business intelligence and data warehousing solutions for over 15 years.
Martin Davies – Project Manager
Martin started his career as an architect, working as a designer on major projects across the UK. He quickly diversified into project and programme management and now has over 10 years experience in this field, delivering projects not just in the UK but in the USA and Europe. He has experience working with a variety of sectors, both private and public, including the NHS and MoD.
His recent experience has been in programme management where he was working on projects related to portal development, data warehouse establishment and legacy data migration within the defence sector.
Steve Gould – Project Manager
Steve has worked in IT for 25 years. His career has seen him work as a programmer for a software house, an IT Manager and, in the 4 years prior to joining Ardentia, as an Implementation Consultant for a large ERP software author.
Steve is qualified as a PRINCE2 Practitioner.
Chris Williams – Product Strategy Manager
Chris has worked for Ardentia for eight years, working within the health informatics industry since 1996, being involved predominantly with national scale informatics, both commercial and in the NHS since the start of his career in 1991.
Before Ardentia Chris has been responsible for the development of several vertical market products. He now works across a few roles within Ardentia; in business development, as a domain and commercial lead within the National Program and a business, process and requirements specialist for Ardentia being responsible for the concept and initial design for several of Ardentias products and also national services and process within SUS.
John Astbury – Development Manager
John is one of Ardentia most experience employees having over 28 years NHS IT experience. He is an expert in NHS Information systems and has managed several large scale NHS development projects.
Currently John is responsible for the management and development of all of Ardentia’s core product developments as well as for the day-to-day supervision of the Development team.
Keith Sherratt – Principal Solutions Architect
Keith is currently responsible for the technical design authority group within Ardentia and is involved in directing the architecture and strategic direction of the technology upon which the company creates its solutions.
Keith has over 20 years experience as a developer beginning with the IRC Patient Administration System in 1988. After 5 years at the NHS, Keith worked for a number of multinational organisations including AT&T, EDS and AT&T Bell Labs before joining Ardentia in 2001.
