New health-service technology organisation appoints DCMS digital head as leader

Credit: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire/PA Images

Matthew Gould has been named as chief executive of NHSX – the new umbrella organisation for digital, data, and technology across the health service.

Announced six weeks ago by health and social care secretary Matt Hancock, NHSX will take on overall responsibility for setting technology strategy across the NHS. It will, effectively, sit above NHS Digital and Gould will report into Hancock and NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens.

The NHSX chief will take up his new post this summer, after which the organisation will begin a recruitment process with the aim of establishing “a world-class team of technical experts”. This will include a chief technology officer to work nationally to “help solve some of the biggest challenges in health and care”.

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One of the first initiatives undertaken by the new organisation will be to supply digital and data professionals to work with NHS England policymakers in the areas of cancer and mental health. The goal of this work will be to improve how data is collected and supplied to clinicians, as well as helping patients access more services via smartphones.

If this programme delivers good results, it will be expanded into more areas of the NHS.

Gould said: “Our single goal will be to improve the care that everyone in the country gets by making sure that both staff and patients have the technology they need. I will know I have succeeded if in two years we have reduced the crazy amount of time that clinicians spend inputting and accessing patient information, if we have given patients the tools so they can access information and services directly from their phones, and if we have started to build a system in which patient information can be securely accessed from wherever it is needed, ensuring safer and better care as patients move around the system, and saving patients from having to tell every doctor and nurse their story over and over again.”

Gould will join NHSX from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where he currently holds the post of director general for digital and media. Prior to which, he served as director for cyber security at the Cabinet Office.