Meet the Sheffield health-tech boss dealing with 'unprecedented demand'

When you’ve just become the chief executive of a healthcare technology business 200 miles from home at the start of a global pandemic, you could be forgiven for wondering whether you’ve made the right choice.

But Ruth Poole admits she enjoys a challenge and emerged from the first 2020 lockdown armed with a series of entertaining anecdotes from Sheffield’s Airbnb scene.

“All the hotels were closed and commuting from Bristol was a bit much so I found some Airbnbs,” she says. “In one I was kept awake all night by the people playing loud music in the room next to me. Another was next to a drug and alcohol centre for people living on the streets. It was fantastic that it was still running during the lockdown but given that I was in Sheffield for the first time with no idea where I was, it was another challenge to navigate.”

Thankfully, Poole had other distractions, namely leading the £19m turnover business she had just joined.

As the head of Preventx - the UK’s largest provider of remote sexual health testing kits - she had a huge challenge on her hands: preparing for unprecedented demand for its services while at the same time keeping her own staff safe.

The company, which is funded by local authorities and the NHS, provides free testing kits to people who want to check if they have a sexually transmitted infection.

“We saw the volumes of testing and the volumes of people coming to our services rise exponentially - more than 200 per cent,” she says. “Over the last two years we’ve doubled our workforce to 78.

“Part of that growth is because people now accept that testing yourself is quite acceptable. If they can do lateral flow tests and PCR tests then they think it’s quite easy to test themselves for other things too.”

Poole implemented split shifts so she could isolate two halves of her laboratory workforce, provided extensive personal protective equipment, and made sure staff did daily lateral flow tests and twice weekly PCR tests.

“We were slightly obsessive about people complying with all of that to maintain a covid-free bubble,” she says.

The demand for its services has been so great that Preventx recently invested £1m in doubling the size of its laboratory and warehousing and plans to take on another 30 staff.

The laboratory at Meadowhall Business Park processes more than 300,000 tests each month from the 20,000 kits it sends to people each week.

The business works with more than 60 per cent of the local authorities across England, including 30 London boroughs.

“We run the world’s biggest publicly-funded STI testing service. Globally, there is nothing that comes close, ” says Poole.

She adds: “People might say sexual health is not such a priority but it’s actually really important.

“We’re able to help to prevent some awful situations happening by providing contraception services alongside sexual health services.”

The company has recruited a number of science graduates recently and is sponsoring a number of science students through their degrees.

“We’ve already doubled the size of our workforce and with the new space we can double in size again. Our expectation is that within two years we’ll have 60 scientifically qualified laboratory staff working for us, up from 30,” Poole says.

Preventx is also keen to expand its international footprint. It recently acquired businesses in Spain and Holland, which has created additional testing work for its Sheffield laboratory.

“The business is very scalable,” she says. “That’s why we felt it was worth investing in the infrastructure here so that we could really grow our business across northern and southern Europe.”

Poole started her career as a nurse in the eighties, specialising in chemotherapy as a cancer care nurse.

“In that moment when you’re giving them the chemotherapy, they have your undivided attention and its an incredible privilege to be in that position,” she says.

She went on to work for Healthcare at Home, a start-up which enabled people with long term health conditions to undergo treatment at home rather than in hospital.

Over 20 years, she rose through the ranks to commercial director, responsible for driving growth from a team of four with just one patient, up to 2,000 staff with over 150,000 patients.

During that period she also had her five children. “There were days where life was a bit chaotic but my husband has been an incredible support,” she says. “He gave up work when our youngest, who has cerebal palsy, was one and he’s done an amazing job.”

Looking for a new career challenge in 2016, Poole became director of speciality at Celesio UK, responsible for growing the speciality services that support the NHS including clinical homecare, hospital and community services.

Three years later she was choosing between two new job opportunities - one in her home city of Bristol and the other at Preventx in Sheffield. She says: “My husband said to me ‘you’ll be bored in a month if you take the Bristol job, take the Sheffield job. And he was absolutely right.”

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James Mitchinson