New leaders for NHS IT

The Department of Health has announced Christine Connelly as the first chief information officer for health and named Martin Bellamy as director of programme and systems delivery, leading NHS Connecting for Health.

The new appointments follow the departure of Richard Granger as director general of NHS IT in January and a review of NHS IT leadership as part of the Health Informatics Review. The DH advertised the new posts on salaries of up to £200,000.

NHS Chief Executive David Nicholson said he was delighted with the new appointments and that they brought “a breadth of skills and experience that will be invaluable as we continue to roll out new and innovative systems to help NHS staff to transform the services they provide for patients.”

The DH says Connelly is an independent consultant. Previously, she was chief information officer at Cadbury Schweppes PLC, with direct control of all IT operations and projects.

However, she spent more than 20 years of her career at BP PLC, where her roles included chief of staff for gas, power and renewables, and head of IT for both the upstream and downstream business.

Martin Bellamy has worked for the Department for Work and Pensions since 2003, where his main role was chief information officer for the Pension Service.

He has also held the positions of group applications director in Corporate IT and senior responsible officer for information management in the DWP Change Programme. Before that, he worked for KPMG Consulting in London and for Reuters.

In her new job, Connelly will lead on the DH’s information strategy and integrating leadership across the NHS and associated bodies, including NHS CFH and the Information Centre.

Bellamy will lead NHS CFH and focus on “enhancing partnerships with and within the NHS.” Both will start work on Monday, 22 September. Gordon Hextall is expected to remain chief operating officer at NHS CFH.