Digital Health CNIO Network chair revealed as NHS Digital’s chief nurse

The current chair of the Digital Health CNIO Network has been announced as the new chief nurse at NHS Digital.

Jo Dickson was most recently clinical informatics director at Nuffield Health and has also been CNIO at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. She has worked in a variety of specialties in her 25-year nursing career, moving into clinical informatics more than 10 years ago.

During this time Dickson has led several technology-enabled change programmes, including ePMA [Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration], EPR and shared care records programmes.

As well as being the current chair of the Digital Health CNIO Network, Dickson is also a founding fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics. She has a particular interest in the use of interoperability standards to improve information sharing between healthcare settings, and between clinicians and citizens in order to optimise patient outcomes and quality of care.

Dickson said: “I’m very excited to be joining NHS Digital, having observed their work during the last year in delivering digital services to support clinicians and citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I’m also looking forward to working in partnership with the national CNIO, Natasha Phillips, and her team to support the delivery and implementation of the digital priorities for nursing and midwifery that are a key part of the wider agenda for Chief Nursing Officers.”

She takes over from the role previously held by Caron Swinscoe and Anne Cooper. Cooper stepped down in 2018 while Swinscoe took on the role on an interim basis.