Colleague News
Keeping Patients at the Heart of Care; How Clinical Expertise Is Making Sure Community Voices Are Heard
How NHS Supply Chain’s Ellie Addison is bringing community voices and system leadership together to improve health and care services.
Driving Better Value in Northern Ireland
A clinically-led procurement transformation in Northern Ireland unlocks savings and smarter decision-making.
Celebrating Allied Health Professions Day – 14 October 2025
Colleagues in the field reflect on their careers within the Allied Health Professionals community.
A Shared Responsibility
This video is a celebration of how future leaders are embracing our shared responsibility to deliver safe patient care for the NHS, patients and caregivers.
Clinical Community Spotlight
Every month we’re sharing an insight into the vast range of clinical and non-clinical expertise which makes up our Clinical Community.
This month we’re featuring Cath Bruce, our Specialist Medical Advisor.
Cath has recently joined NHS Supply Chain in a new role as Specialist Medical Advisor. As a medical doctor, she has worked in the NHS for almost 30 years. She is excited to be given the opportunity to join the clinical transformational journey at NHS Supply Chain.
Being driven by a passion for medicine, and in particular for General Practice (GP), since a very young age, she always knew that becoming a GP was her primary focus.
Once achieved, she has spent the past 25 years as a GP Partner within the South East of England. More recently she has taken the opportunity to further develop her career in medical education, now also working as a Senior Lecturer in General Practice and Primary Care in a University Medical School.
Working in Primary Care, Cath has developed expert skills in general practice medicine as well as operational and management expertise, such as quality governance, system leadership and delivery of service.
See our Useful Links section to find out more about Cath’s career path to becoming a Specialist Medical Advisor.
Collaborative Expertise: Clinical Community across four directorates
NHS Supply Chain is supported by a specialist leadership group known as the Clinical Community. This diverse group brings together healthcare professionals with a wide range of qualifications – such as nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals including physiotherapists, operating department practitioners, and paramedics. They work in close collaboration with colleagues who contribute extensive experience from the NHS, industry, specialist healthcare products, and procurement.
All focused on how to support the NHS to deliver high quality clinical patient care.
The Clinical Community operates across four directorates – Clinical, Commercial, Strategy and Change, and Customer Engagement – ensuring a well-rounded, strategic approach to supporting NHS priorities.
Clinical
- Innovation
- Patient Safety
- Clinical Professional Standards
- Regulatory Compliance
- Clinical Operations and Development
Commercial
- Medical Technology
- Medical and Consumables
- Diagnostic Equipment and Services
Customer Engagement
- Voice of the Customer
- Care Pathway
- Out of Hospital Care
Strategy and Change
- Inventory Management Systems