Movers and Shakers news roundup

Our August edition of Movers and Shakers features a new CIO at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as well as appointments at Sensyne Health and Tunstall Healthcare.

Tom Poulter has been appointed CIO at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Since 2017, Poulter has been deputy CIO at Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust.

In a post on LinkedIn, he said: “Fantastic digital transformation work going on in the NHS across the North West – I look forward to working with the digital teams in Cheshire & Merseyside again.”

The Northern Care Alliance NHS Group (NCA) has appointed Dr Owen Williams as its new chief executive following the announcement that Raj Jain will retire at the end of the summer.

Dr Williams has been chief executive of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) since 2012 and has also been the senior responsible officer for capital and estates in the West Yorkshire and Harrogate ICS since 2017.

He said: “I am both delighted and honoured to be taking up the chief executive role at NCA. Across each of the care organisations there is a track record of providing great care for the communities that we serve and, without a shadow of doubt, every one of our 20,000 colleagues have visibly stepped up to meet the challenges of the pandemic.

“The board’s ongoing commitment to patient quality and safety, alongside their desire to provide the maximum support possible to colleagues providing care, is what attracted me to the role. This, together with collaborating further with our partners, presents a real opportunity for us to collectively move forward with confidence.

“I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues at my current organisation, CHFT, who have been the embodiment of what it means to be in public service.”

Sensyne Health has appointed Dr David Ruau as its new chief scientific officer.

Dr Ruau, who will begin his new role on 1 September 2021, will lead the research effort at Sensyne aimed at applying ethical AI to the improvement of patient care and the discovery and development of new medicines.

He joins Sensyne from Bayer where, from 2017, he was head of global data assets and decision science and to his new role will bring expertise in the use of genomic and real world patient data in pharmaceutical discovery and development, as well as a strong network within the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Ruau said: “I am thrilled to be joining Sensyne at such an exciting time for the business and for the pharmaceutical AI sector.

“The ethical application of AI to improve healthcare for patients and life sciences research is one of my greatest passions. Sensyne has a unique model that offers the potential to transform pharmaceutical development and I am greatly looking forward to joining the team.”

Tunstall Healthcare has announced that it has appointed Gary Steen as group chief technology officer.

In his new role Steen will lead Tunstall’s innovation and development function globally and will be responsible for all solutions and products from Tunstall’s technology delivery centres in the UK, Sweden and Germany.

Steen joins Tunstall from TalkTalk where he was group managing director for technology and he has experience of successfully delivering a number of large scale technology transformations across services and in-home devices.

He said: “I’m delighted to be joining the Tunstall team during a period of pivotal growth in its critical and innovative solutions. Operating in 15 countries, Tunstall is ideally placed to continue to build on its market leading position and I look forward to leading a world class technology team that supports the needs of its existing and future customer base.”