Dr Sarah Thomas

Sarah is based at the School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation, University of Southampton within the NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC) where she is the Assistant Director, Insight and Evaluation. Sarah leads the NIHR Centre for Business Intelligence and a team of analytical and research staff who’s responsibilities span business intelligence, portfolio insight, evaluation research and impact assessment. 

Sarah is a qualitative researcher and evaluator by training with an interest in complex, multi-method evaluation. She joined the NIHR HTA programme as Senior Programme Manager in 2008. Since joining NIHR, she has undertaken a number of different roles including managing research funding, corporate governance, patient and public involvement, peer review, and intellectual property management.

Sarah is a Prince 2 and APMG Change Management Practitioner, with a specific interest in developing and embedding Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, learning and Adapting (MERLA) approaches into organisations and programme design. In addition to her NIHR work, Sarah leads the development of evaluation and contract research activity through our emergent consultancy Hatch at the School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation. Previously, Sarah was the Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) Policy Forum Scientific Programme Manager, and she has held evaluation research roles with The Health Foundation and in the private research and consultancy sector.