Healthcare IT Champion – the final six

The final round of voting has opened in this year’s Healthcare IT Champion of the Year award – and you now have two weeks to decide who will be unveiled as the winner in October.

The Healthcare IT Champion of the Year is a special category of the EHI Awards 2014 in association with CGI that is decided by the readers of EHI and the people who work with those nominated.

This year, there were more than 20 nominations for the award, so just getting to the shortlist is a significant achievement. Nevertheless, with more than 3,000 votes cast so far, the final six are:

Mark England, director of re-engineering at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Kerrie Darvill, deputy direct of IM&T for Greater Manchester West NHS Trust

Rowan Pritchard-Jones, consultant plastic surgeon and chief clinical information officer, St Helens and Knowsley Health Informatics Service

Darren Holmes, head of ICT, St Barnabas Lincolnshire Hospice

Andy Kinnear, chair of the Connecting Care board and director of business intelligence and informatics, South West Commissioning Service

Dr Rick Jones, formerly specialist advisor to the NHS England National Pathology Programme, deputy director of the Yorkshire Centre for Health Informatics, and consultant chemical pathologist for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

Sadly Dr Jones passed away after his name was put forward. We have maintained his nomination for a posthumous award at the request of his friends and colleagues.

As in previous years, if you voted in the first round and your nominee has got through to the second round, you cannot vote again, because your vote has already been counted.

However, if you voted in round one and your nominee did not get through, then you can vote again for one of the remaining six. If you have not voted so far, then you can also vote for any of the remaining six.

Linda Davidson, director of EHI, said: “The competition for Healthcare IT Champion of the year is tougher than ever. This year’s first round attracted more than 1,000 more votes than last year’s.

“As ever, people are passionate about their nominees, who have all done great work for healthcare IT in their different fields. We wish all of them all the best; but now it is up to EHI’s readers to decide who should emerge as the final winner.”

The second round of voting closes at 4pm on Friday, 15 August, and the winner will be announced at the annual black-tie awards dinner in central London on Thursday, 9 October.