HSCIC appoints director of data science

Informatics specialist Daniel Ray appointed to head up Centre of Excellence for big data and data science

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) has hired a director of data science to head up its Centre of Excellence.

Last month, HSCIC revealed that it was setting up a Centre of Excellence for big data and data science with the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office. The idea was initiated under the government's Data Science Programme, which was set up in 2014 to help the government make better use of data science in policy-making and service delivery.

Although it is unclear how the centre will run or how it fits in with HSCIC's overall strategy, the organisation has hired informatics specialist Daniel Ray to be its director of data science.

Ray has worked in the NHS for 17 years, during which time he has led informatics teams in all sectors of healthcare and completed a number of international healthcare data projects.

His most recent role was director of informatics at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB), where he co-founded the university's Quality and Outcomes Research Unit (QuORU).

Ray, who will join HSCIC on March 14, said he was "very excited" about his new role, which would involve "further unlocking national health datasets to help underpin evidence-based policy making".

He said that in his new role he would also "be able to create an enabling secure environment to catapult world-class research on the unique data holding the NHS".

Professor Martin Severs, HSCIC's lead clinician and interim director of information and analytics, said that Ray brought with him "knowledge and perspective of three key arenas that support high-quality patient care - the NHS, the independent sector, and academia".

"His digital transformational work at University Hospital Birmingham is well known, while his appointment as a professor with the Farr Institute is testament to the regard in which he is held in the world of big data," he said.

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