Healthcare IT appointments in brief

The last appointments round-up of 2015 has news of change at the very top of the Department of Health, at the controversial care.data programme, and at trusts and healthcare IT suppliers in the UK.

Una O’Brien leaves the Department of Health

The Department of Health’s permanent secretary Dame Una O’Brien plans to step down in April 2016 after five years in the role. During her time at the DH, she led on implementing former health secretary Andrew Lansley’s wide-ranging reform of the NHS and has been a member of the National Information Board, which is leading on the plans to transform the use of digital technology in health and social care by 2020.

O’Connor replaces Kelsey as care.data SRO

Ronan O’Connor is to take over from Tim Kelsey as the senior responsible owner of the controversial care.data programme to create a national database of patient data. O’Connor is NHS England’s director of information and transparency and currently serves as deputy SRO for care.data, which has been delayed by two years because of ongoing issues with public information and consent. Dame Fiona Caldicott provides advice on these issues early in 2016.

New CIO at Moorfields Eye Hospital

Elisa Steele has left her role as director of IT at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust to join Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as chief information officer. She replaces Owen Brady who served as interim IT director at the trust for two years. Jon Davies has been appointed interim director of IT at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS. He joins from The Health and Social Care Information Centre where he was programme manager.

Head of analytics for MedeAnalytics UK

Health IT veteran Paul Molyneux is the new head of analytics for the UK business of data insight company MedeAnalytics. Molyneux will lead on the company’s plans to help healthcare organisations understand which patients in their population are at risk of adverse events and predict what prevention methods are likely to be successful for specific individuals. His career includes spells at Dr Foster, Cerner and the Care Quality Commission. He was also part of the Healthcare Commission team that used data to get evidence for poor standards of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Cambio appoints UK managing director

Swedish electronic patient record provider Cambio has appointed Gordon Lorimer as managing director for its UK operations. He will lead the company’s plans to grow in the UK, where its Cosmic EPR has been in use in The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust since 2014. Lorimer was most recently managing director at Intouch with Health and has experience at NCR Healthcare and iSOFT.

Senior appointments at Dr Now

Mobile video consultation firm Dr Now has named Tim Ng as chief technology officer and Ian Ronald as chief operating officer. Ng, who has worked at Fujitsu and Latitude Group, will oversee the continued development of the company’s mobile platforms and applications that connect patients to clinicians via their smartphone or tablet. Ronald has considerable retail experience at companies such as BP, Pizza Hut and Scholastic.