Matthew Swindells takes on new role as advisor for Written Medicine

Former deputy chief executive of NHS England, Matthew Swindells, has taken on an advisor role for Written Medicine.

Written Medicine allows healthcare professionals to provide medication information in a patient’s preferred language.

Swindells, who has also previously acted as senior policy advisor to the health secretary and national director of operations and information at NHS England, will advise the company’s senior leadership team on strategy, growth and product development.

Ghalib Khan, founder of Written Medicine, said: “Matthew is a healthcare and health tech visionary who is highly regarded as a global leader, with an incredible track record of leading great teams and world-class organisations, both in the UK and abroad.

“We share his vision in improving health and medication information equity and accessibility for all and are in the accelerated process of making it happen.”

Swindells is currently a visiting professor at Imperial College’s Institute of Global Health Innovation and council member at the University of Hull.

He added: “I am excited to work with the leadership team at Written Medicine to help them grow from innovative start-up to a pervasive company that actively helps to reduce health inequalities by making medicines information reflect our diverse and multi-cultural country, simplifying complex information, translating it into multiple languages and making it understandable for people with poor literacy levels.

“I believe that within a few years it will be unacceptable to issue medicines advice in only tiny, dense print and the English language.”

Swindells left the NHS in July 2019 after relinquishing his IT and related responsibilities that May, which were then be immediately be transferred to Matthew Gould, the CEO of NHSX.

During his time at NHS England a number of digital projects were put in place, including the Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) programme which aims to created a group of reference sites for digital transformation in the NHS.