The Royal Devon is creating a new Chief Medical Officer role to lead our digital and research agendas.

From next year, we will have two CMO roles on our Board – one providing service and clinical leadership, and one driving our digital transformation and leadership in research.

This additional role will help the Trust align to the priorities in the national 10-year plan, including the shift from analogue to digital. The move also recognises the scale of our Trust, as well as the size of our current Chief Medical Officer’s portfolio.

Dame Shan Morgan, Chair of the Royal Devon, said: “This new role will allow us to make the best of opportunities in digital and research to improve care, and move to the next level of system-working in these areas. This is an important move at a time of transformation for the NHS and recognises the scale of opportunity.”

Our ambitions to be research-led and digitally-enabled are central to our Better Together strategy, and we have already taken many steps on this journey:

• Epic is playing a huge role in transforming the way we deliver care, from the exciting things we are doing with artificial intelligence (AI), to remote monitoring through virtual wards and using wearable technologies. We upload more data to Epic using wearables than any other Epic-enabled provider in Europe.
• We have plans in 2025/26 to increase the adoption of AI to support our processes across the Trust, and this work will be led by the new CMO role.
• We are a pilot site for the new Federated Data platform which aims to create a common data infrastructure across the NHS and we are playing a lead role in the One Devon programme to create a Devon-wide patient record.
• We are increasing clinical trials and research opportunities. Most recently we have launched a health technology research centre in Exeter and we’ve achieved funding to open a clinical research facility in North Devon.
• We host the South West Genomic Medicine Service which supports patients and families affected by rare genetic conditions and cancer, including the world-leading rapid whole genome sequencing for acutely ill babies and children.

This progress has been spearheaded by our long-standing CMO Professor Adrian Harris, who will take on the CMO (Digital and Research) role.

Adrian said: “We have seen how Epic has transformed care for patients at the Royal Devon and are proud of the work we are doing in the academic and research fields.”

“We are on the forefront of designing healthcare and the health workforce of the future, and I look forward to continuing to lead the Trust on that journey with greater focus.”

We will shortly be advertising for the CMO (Service and Clinical) in an open recruitment process. Whilst this recruitment takes place, Adrian will continue to cover his current portfolio and will lead us through winter.

Sam Higginson, Chief Executive Officer, said: “This is an exciting change to our executive leadership team which will help us deliver excellent care to our patients now and in the future. I am sure you will join me in congratulating Adrian as he takes on this opportunity.”