Movers and shakers news round-up

This month’s round-up of industry movements sees Dr John Halamka appointed president of Mayo Clinic Platform, as well as appointments at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, National Services Scotland and DoctorLink.

Dr John Halamka has been made president of Mayo Clinic’s new digital health initiative.

Halamka, who has spent nearly 25 years in Boston where he has served as CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will lead a portfolio of new digital platform businesses focused on transforming health by leveraging artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and an ecosystem of partners for Mayo Clinic.

Halamka, who was a keynote speaker at 2019’s Digital Health Summer Schools, began his new role on 1 January, writing on his Geek Doctor blog: “As an adviser to many start-ups, incubators, and accelerators around the world, I’ve experienced the barriers and enablers to innovation.

“Launching a pilot can take 6 months just to work through approval processes.  Sometimes academic medical centers can take as long as 18 months to formalize a proof of concept project.

“What if a platform of technology, policies and people were able to radically shorten the time to evaluate emerging companies and created an ‘innovation factory’ for collaboration? That’s how I think about the Mayo Clinic Platform opportunity.”

Pauline Butterworth has been appointed chief operating officer of Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Butterworth joins the trust from East Sussex Healthcare Trust, where she has been deputy chief operating officer since 2013.

During that time she was also programme director for transformation of urgent care at Hastings and Rother and Eastbourne and Seaford Clinical Commissioning Group.

A trained clinician, Pauline worked as a therapist and manager in the USA and in paediatrics in Australia, before returning to the UK.

Her appointment follows the retirement of chief operating officer and deputy chief executive Lesley Strong, who has been with KCHFT since its inception in 2011. Lesley served in the NHS for more than 40 years.

Butterworth said: “I love working in the community.  It feels like a really exciting time to be working for a community provider, in terms of the NHS Long Term Plan, where the focus is very much on services in the community and how we will be working with primary care and as part of the integrated care partnerships and integrated care system.

“As an outstanding trust, I am particularly interested in how we can support some of our colleagues, so we are truly working together as one system.’’

Gordon Beattie has been appointed as the new director of national procurement of National Services Scotland (NSS), overseeing all operations across its strategic sourcing, logistics and supply chain services.

Beattie joins NSS from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, where he has held various senior procurement roles since January 2001.

Beattie said: “I’m delighted to be joining NSS as the director of national procurement (NP). I’ve worked in partnership with NP for a long time and it’s been great to have been involved in supporting the growth of the organisation.

“In this role, a focus of mine will be to maximise how we collaborate and partner across the health and social care sector, in turn providing benefits to patients, customers and the wider economy.”

Jim Miller , director of procurement, commissioning and facilities, said: “Combining the responsibilities of strategic sourcing and logistics naturally helps align our services to more collaborative opportunities whilst being ever more customer focused – one joined up service.

“I’m looking forward to welcoming Gordon and the ideas he’ll bring to support even greater collaborative working within National Procurement and across NHS Scotland.”

Three new non-executive directors have been appointed to the Board of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, including the chief executive of Harrogate Borough Council, an expert in business leadership and transformation and the Chair of Mansfield Building Society.

Wallace Sampson is chief executive of Harrogate Borough Council, having been with them since August 2008. He has worked in local government for over 35 years.

Andrew Papworth has 20-plus years’ experience in financial services, including six-plus years at executive level, working in regulated environments.

Jeremy Cross is a fellow of Institute of Chartered Accountants. He is joining the Trust from Airedale NHS Foundation Trust where he has been a non-executive director for five years, and during his time there has chaired the Audit Committee, Finance and Performance Committee, and the Charity Committee.

Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust cares for the population in Harrogate and the local area as well as across North Yorkshire and Leeds. It runs Harrogate District Hospital and Ripon Community Hospital, and provides children’s services in County Durham, Darlington, Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Gateshead and Sunderland.

Hadleigh Stollar has joined Graphnet as its customer director, with responsibility for ensuring that the company’s health and social care users get the most out of their systems.

Stollar, who was previously programme manager for integrated care at NHS Digital, started his new post in November 2019.

“Graphnet stands out a mile in the supplier market and I am really thrilled to be joining the company, particularly at such an exciting time in its development”, he said.

Finally, Rupert Spiegelberg has been appointed as the new chief executive of UK online health and symptom assessment platform, Doctorlink.

Spiegelberg most recently served as CEO of Munich-based AI-powered digital identity company IDNow.

Prior to that, he was CEO of Investis Inc in New York, a global SaaS communications platform that helped Fortune 500 and other listed companies meet their online regulatory disclosure requirements.

Spiegelberg succeeds former Doctorlink CEO and founder, Andrew Gardner, who will remain as a special advisor to the Board.