The Chief Scientific Officer in England is the head of profession for the 53,000 healthcare scientists working in the National Health Service and its associated bodies.
The Chief Scientific Officer is one of the NHS professional officers (including the National Medical Director and Chief Nursing Officer) who are employed within NHS England. These roles lead their own professional groups as well as providing expert knowledge about their specific disciplines to the NHS and wider healthcare system. [1]
The Chief Scientific Officer provides professional leadership and expert clinical advice across the health system, as well as working alongside senior clinical leaders within NHS England and the broader commissioning system. [2] The Chief Scientific Officer is also responsibility for delivering the Government's strategy for a modernised healthcare science workforce, Modernising Scientific Careers.
Professor Sue Hill OBE has been the Chief Scientific Officer since October 2002 first within the Department of Health and subsequently NHS England . [3] The role was strengthened in March 2023 with the appointment of a Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, Dr.Joel. [4]
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England, along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish Government, Welsh Government or Northern Ireland Executive. It oversees the English National Health Service (NHS). The department is led by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with three ministers of state and three parliamentary under-secretaries of state.
The Healthcare Commission was a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Health of the United Kingdom. It was set up to promote and drive improvement in the quality of health care and public health in England and Wales. It aimed to achieve this by becoming an authoritative and trusted source of information and by ensuring that this information is used to drive improvement. The Commission was abolished on 31 March 2009 and its responsibilities in England broadly subsumed by the Care Quality Commission.
A medical physicist is a health professional with specialist education and training in the concepts and techniques of applying physics in medicine and competent to practice independently in one or more of the subfields (specialties) of medical physics. A medical physicist plays a fundamental role in applying physics to medicine, but particularly in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The scientific and technological progress in medical physics has led to a variety of skills that must be integrated into the role of a medical physicist in order for them to perform their job. The "medical services" provided to patients undergoing diagnostic and therapeutic treatments must, therefore, be the result of different but complementary skills. In general, the medical physicist is responsible for all scientific and technical aspects of imaging, radiation treatment, and radiation safety. It is their occupational role to ensure that medical modalities offered to patients are met with the utmost quality assurance. It is the medical physicist that manage and supervise the efforts of dosimetrists, therapists and technologists in that capacity.
Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) is a programme for postgraduate medical training introduced in the United Kingdom in 2005. The programme replaced the traditional grades of medical career before the level of Consultant. The different stages of the programme contribute towards a "Certificate of Completion of Training" (CCT). It has been dogged by criticism within and outside the medical profession, and an independent review of MMC led by Professor Sir John Tooke criticised many aspects of it.
Professor Sir Bruce Edward Keogh, KBE, FMedSci, FRCS, FRCP is a Rhodesian-born British surgeon who specialises in cardiac surgery. He was medical director of the National Health Service in England from 2007 and national medical director of the NHS Commissioning Board from 2013 until his retirement early in 2018. He is chair of Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust and chairman of The Scar Free Foundation.
Beverly Louise Malone is the chief executive officer of the National League for Nursing in the United States. Prior to assuming this position in February 2007 she served as general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing in the United Kingdom for six years.
Sir David Nicholson is a public policy analyst and NHS Manager who is the Chair of Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust and Chair of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust. He was previously the Chief Executive of the National Health Service in England. He was appointed in October 2011 following the NHS reforms, having been seventh Chief executive of the NHS within the Department of Health since September 2006. He issued what has become known as the "Nicholson challenge" regarding the finances of the NHS. He retired from the role on 1 April 2014 in the wake of the Stafford Hospital scandal.
A chief scientific officer (CSO) is a position at the head of scientific research operations at organizations or companies performing significant scientific research projects.
Dame Susan Lesley Hill has been the Chief Scientific Officer for England since October 2002.
Modernising Scientific Careers (MSC) is a UK-wide government initiative to address the training and education needs of the whole healthcare science workforce in the National Health Service (NHS). The initiative won a Healthcare Innovation Award in 2013. Its stated aims are to introduce flexibility, sustainability and modern career pathways for the healthcare science workforce to meet future needs of the NHS.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provided for the most extensive reorganisation of the structure of the National Health Service in England to date. It removed responsibility for the health of citizens from the Secretary of State for Health, which the post had carried since the inception of the NHS in 1948. It abolished primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities (SHAs) and transferred between £60 billion and £80 billion of "commissioning", or healthcare funds, from the abolished PCTs to several hundred clinical commissioning groups, partly run by the general practitioners (GPs) in England. A new executive agency of the Department of Health, Public Health England, was established under the act on 1 April 2013.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were National Health Service (NHS) organisations set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to replace strategic health authorities and primary care trusts to organise the delivery of NHS services in each of their local areas in England. On 1 July 2022, they were abolished and replaced by integrated care systems as a result of the Health and Care Act 2022.
Health Education England (HEE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. Its function is to provide national leadership and coordination for the education and training within the health and public health workforce within England. It has been operational since June 2012.
Healthcare in Bedfordshire is the responsibility of Bedfordshire and Luton Integrated Care Systems.
Catherine Jane CalderwoodFRCOG FRCPE is a Scottish consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, who has served as the National Clinical Director for Sustainable Delivery at the Golden Jubilee University National Hospital since 2021. She previously served as the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland from 2015 to 2020, having advised the Scottish Government's initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.
The "Greater Manchester Model" of NHS health care was a system uniquely devolved within England, by way of close integration with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and local authorities, led by the Mayor of Greater Manchester. In July 2022 the Greater Manchester integrated care system took over responsibility for health and social care in the conurbation. The financial plan for 2022–23 had an initial shortage of £187 million.
Michael Harmer CBE is the former deputy chief medical officer for Wales, former chair of the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee, and incumbent chair of the National Clinical Forum for NHS Wales.
NHS Improvement (NHSI) was a non-departmental body in England, responsible for overseeing the National Health Service's foundation trusts and NHS trusts, as well as independent providers that provide NHS-funded care. It supported providers to give patients consistently safe, high quality, compassionate care within local health systems that are financially sustainable.
Nikita "Nikki" Kanani MBE is a general practitioner and the former chief clinical officer of the Bexley Clinical Commissioning Group. In 2018 she became the first woman to be appointed medical director of primary care at NHS England.
Sir Stephen Huw Powis is a renal medicine consultant and has been the National Medical Director of NHS England since 2018. Previously he was the chief medical officer at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. He is also a professor at University College London.