Nursing, midwifery and allied health professionals need technology that supports them at the point of care, built by people who understand what frontline practice actually looks like. This is what Professor Jacqui Cooper brings to Lyrebird Health.

We're pleased to welcome Professor Jacqui Cooper to the team as our Chief Nursing, Midwifery, and Allied Health Professionals Lead for UKI & EMEA.

Jacqui brings a wealth of experience to the role. She also serves as Chief Nursing Information Officer for Health Innovation Manchester, with a clinical background as a registered nurse and four organisations' worth of CNIO experience leading the digitisation of nursing, midwifery and allied health professions (NMAHPs) through pre and post EPR implementations.

Her clinical career spanned neonatal units across Cheshire and Mersey, and the Neonatal Regional Transport Team, and her work today spans local, regional, national and global digital programmes, providing strategic and operational nursing leadership across the development, deployment and optimisation of clinical information systems.

Upon her appointment, Jacqui sat down with the team for a discussion. Here's what we got into:
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Given your high-profile influence as a Chief Nursing Information Officer and Honorary Professor, what was the specific 'pivot point' that convinced you that joining Lyrebird Health was the most effective way to address the systemic challenges you witnessed within the NHS?

“The pivot point was watching brilliant clinicians spend more time on documentation than on the patient in front of them. I'd spent years pushing for digital maturity from inside the system, but I realised the biggest unlock wasn't another EPR module, it was giving time back at the point of care. Lyrebird let me act on that at scale, rather than one trust at a time.”

You have been a consistent champion for nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals. From your perspective, how does the deployment of Ambient Voice Technology (AVT) move the needle from simply 'reducing paperwork' to fundamentally reshaping the daily patient-clinician experience for these specific groups?

“Reducing paperwork is the headline, but the real shift is presence. When a nurse, midwife or allied health professional isn't typing while a patient talks, eye contact comes back, trust comes back, and clinical judgement sharpens because you're actually listening. For allied health professionals especially, that's the difference between a rushed encounter and one that feels like care.”

Reflecting on the white paper you supported with Future Nurse, how does the reality of the AVT solutions you are now scaling at Lyrebird align with the long-term 'digital maturity' vision you set out for the nursing profession in that document?

“The white paper set out digital maturity as clinicians trusting technology enough to let it work quietly in the background. What we're scaling now is that vision in practice: AVT isn't a bolt-on system, it's designed to disappear into the consultation so the technology serves the relationship, not the other way round.”

How are you leveraging your Honorary Professorship and your academic standing to help shape the clinical research and safety validation models at Lyrebird?

“My academic role keeps me honest about the evidence bar. Every AVT deployment needs safety validation and outcome data, not just adoption numbers, so I push for independent evaluation, transparent error-reporting, and peer-reviewed publication before we call anything 'proven,' not after.”‍

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At Lyrebird Health we believe digital health tools should be designed alongside the frontline teams who use them, not just for them. Jacqui's appointment reinforces that commitment. Her role ensures the NMAHP voice is represented at every stage of our product development, so the technology we build genuinely fits how nurses, midwives and AHPs work day to day.