Next generation health CIOs and CTOs

James Freed leads the Digital Academy for Health and Care, an organisation dedicated to supporting as many teams in health and care deliver more value tomorrow than they did today. He was the last Chief Digital and Information Officer for Health Education England and his career has taken him through Cancer Research, Change Management and Standards development.

In 2017 James was voted by peers as one of the top 100 influencers globally in Health IT as part of the #HIT100 twitter campaign. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a FedIP accredited Leading Practitioner and a Chartered Health CIO accredited through CHIME.

I am the Chief Digital and Infrastructure Officer at Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust. Prior to this, I held the role of Deputy Director for Quality, Innovation and Improvement and CIO for the North West Ambulance Service. I am passionate about transforming health and care for all people by harnessing technology, data and estates, using a methodologically driven approach to improve the way we deliver services. I am a big advocate for clinical leadership and co-design with patients, providing the space for staff, patients and technical teams to work together to generate and test ideas.

I have a unique understanding and combined experience of digital, estates, mental health, improvement and NHS regulatory requirements over my 20 years in the NHS. I have worked nationally, regionally and for providers. I have worked alongside some of the world’s leading healthcare improvers and thought leaders and developed partnerships with industry, academia and health and social care to deliver change. I am passionate about leading teams to deliver standards and governance ensuring safety and security whilst enabling change and doing this thorough collaboration and partnerships where we bring people together to deliver on shared goals.

At LSCFT I have Executive responsibility for Digital and Estates. For 4 years prior I was the CIO at NWAS where we were able to significantly improve our digital maturity, taking us from negative outliers to leaders in the ambulance sector rapidly improving our infrastructure and enabling digital innovation underpinned by improvement methods.

Before NWAS I spent 10 years working in improvement and innovation in Salford. During this time I worked regionally and nationally to deliver national measurement systems, large scale change programmes and provide support to teams testing innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges across the NHS.

She started the Shuri Network in 2019 as she is passionate about increasing diversity, innovation and safety and to encourage other women from minority ethnic groups to lead and engage with digital transformation. She was awarded the international Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship by the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin in 2023 to examine the German digital health strategy and help develop new insights that will help health systems deliver more equitable and innovative care.