Ian Townend

Ian has extensive experience in providing senior leadership, consultancy, governance and project management in the public sector. He became chief architect at NHS England after seven years as lead architect, leading across architecture and technology strategy within the CTO area at NHSX. He is heavily involved in the commissioning, design and development of programmes and systems in use within the NHS, including the National Record Locator, the National Event Management Service and API Management Layer.

How did you get into IT?

After completing an undergraduate degree in Computing I began my career in NHS IT working for the National Programme for IT within the NHS. Since then I have remained with the NHS working my way from messaging developer through to chief architect and am currently the interim CTO

How do you ensure diversity is taken into account in your IT recruitment?

During recruitment I actively ensure that we are reaching out to networks that will support us in ensuring a diverse team. Some of my team are leading the way in the women in tech space and support me in ensuring our reach to that group as well as using established networks such as Shuri, which reaches women in the BME community.

Which technology are you currently most excited by?

The future potential for AI. Lots of things happening now around ChatGPT, which has many applications across sectors. Health is typically behind the trend in terms of adoption but could potentially yield enormous results through the use of AI from decision support to automated image analysis.

What would an outsider find the most surprising part of your job?

The sheer scope of the areas within healthcare. Everyone thinks of the NHS as a single organisation but in reality there are hundreds of independent organisations, which makes it challenging to bring technology to in a consistent way.

What's your secret talent?

Bringing people together. Technical knowledge and business focus is great but the leadership skill of bringing people together is a vital piece. This lets people come together to focus on a problem and what they can individually bring to the solution.