NHSE seeking Health Data Research Service CEO and chair

NHS England is inviting applications for the inaugural chair and chief executive of the newly established Health Data Research Service (HDRS).

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced the launch of the HDRS in April 2025 to “turbo-charge medical research and deliver better patient care” as part of the NHS 10 year health plan.

The government-owned company aims to bring access to data for medical research into one location, meaning that researchers do not have to navigate different systems or make multiple applications for information for the same project.

A job advert, published by Green Park said that the HDRS is “looking for a chair to oversee the appointment of a Board and a chief executive officer to support the set-up, development and early implementation phase of the health data research service, ensuring that this pioneering organisation is set up for success”.

A blog by Dr Vin Diwakar, national director of transformation at NHSE, and Lucy Vickers, chief data officer at NHSE, says “Over the coming months, we’ll establish the independent organisation that will run HDRS and complete detailed discovery work.”

It adds that in autumn 2025, NHSE will “publish comprehensive policy principles developed with leading experts across healthcare, research, patients, ethics and data protection”.

The first services will launch by the end of 2026, with core capabilities rolling out progressively.

“Done right, HDRS could establish the UK as the global centre for health data research, attract billions in investment, and accelerate the discovery of treatments that improve and save lives,” Diwakar and Vickers said.

They add: “We’re committed to making this vision reality. The UK has the data, the expertise and now the determination to unlock the transformative power of health research. HDRS will make that happen.”

The HDRS will be housed at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridgeshire, where Wellcome is building R&D lab and office spaces to expand the campus’s capacity for genomics and biodata companies.

Under the plans, clinical trials will be fast-tracked to accelerate the development of the medicines and therapies, with the time it takes to set up a clinical trial cut from 250 days (based on the latest data collected in 2022) to 150 days by March 2026.

The initiative is backed by £600 million of funding from the UK government and the Wellcome Trust which will seek to make the UK’s health data assets interoperable and securely available to researchers to support innovations in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.

It follows an independent review of the UK’s health data, published in November 2024, by Professor Cathie Sudlow, chief scientist of Health Data Research UK, which called for barriers to accessing NHS patient data to be removed so that it can be used for research to further medical advances.