NHSX appoints new chief technology officer

The National Health Service’s digital unit, NHSX, has appointed David Turner as its permanent chief technology officer (CTO).

Turner will start work in the role in May 2020. Acting CTO Hadley Beeman will remain in her original role as chief technology adviser to the secretary of state at the Department for Health and Social Care.

“David Turner is a great strategic leader, and ideal to take forward the rest of building the teams and focusing our aims into tangible delivery,” said Beeman in a Twitter post.

Reporting to chief executive Matthew Gould, the CTO will be accountable for defining and delivering the digital technical architecture for the NHS and social care, with a focus on a federated data ecosystem.

NHSX launched the search for a candidate for the role in October 2019, and the job spec at the time called for “strong leadership”, experience in running a development environment, “high-quality strategic and systemic thinking” and in-depth technical expertise in modern systems and web development practices.

Turner has been CTO at William Hill for just over two years, where he was responsible for the everyday management of the company’s 200-strong IT department, as well as its global trading platform and digital transformation projects.

At the gambling firm, Turner led digital initiatives including tackling harms deriving from gambling addiction with the use of facial recognition and cloud computing.

Previously, he was head of architecture, innovation and strategy at logistics firm Hermes.

NHSX is also currently recruiting for a new £130,000 per year chief digital officer.