NHS announces new IT head

The Department of Health (DoH) has found a new head of NHS IT, after the previous occupant left the role after just a few months.

Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS Medical Director, will take over as interim Director General for Informatics at the DoH following Matthew Swindells' departure to public sector consultancy Tribal Group at the end of his secondment to the department.

Swindells' role as chief information officer was created after Richard Granger left earlier this year. Granger had been the highest paid civil servant in the UK.

Keogh joined the DoH in November of last year and has worked on the body's informatics review. The role means Keogh is in charge of NHS Connecting for Health, the implementation of the informatics review, and the £12 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT) - the NHS' massive IT upgrade.

He said: "As the first NHS Medical Director, my clear priorities are to drive improvements in clinical quality and safety in the services we provide for our patients. It is absolutely clear to me that this can only be achieved by accelerating the development and uptake of reliable, local and national information systems which will make the jobs of manager and clinicians easier and enable them to focus on improving clinical quality."

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh has been NHS Medical Director since November 2007 and is responsible for the Clinical Programmes, Healthcare Quality and Medicines, Pharmacy and Industry Directorates within the Department of Health.

Keogh was previously a lecturer and a cardiothoracic surgeon, and was knighted for his services to the medical community in 2003.

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