About NDS / A new approach and a new kind of team

Alan is a Senior Software Engineer currently part of a team responsible for several integration projects in clinical areas such as dermatology, ovarian cancer outcomes and COPD.

Before joining the team at NDS, Alan worked as a software engineer for 17 years in and around the healthcare industry. His core experience was focused on the building of clinical systems in areas such as anaesthesia and pre-operative assessment.

Alistair is a senior product manager currently working on the ReSPECT product. The things he enjoy most about working on ReSPECT is that people understand the problem its trying to solve from personal family experience, that it has tangible benefits for many different communities, and that it spans the whole of health and care.

The majority of Alistair's career has been spent in the private sector working for small software and consulting organisations building solutions for large business to consumer companies. He started his working life as a physicist, using maths and big computers and data to better understand the real world.

As CTO, Alistair's two main responsibilities are growing and running the software engineering team; and setting the technical strategy of NDS as it builds out the national digital platform. Previously, Alistair was CTO of Skyscanner for six years as it grew from 50 to 800 people and moved to being hosted on the public cloud.

He has a doctorate in Biomedical Engineering and Machine Learning from the University of Oxford and loves food, whether it is cooking at home or trying new dishes when travelling overseas.

Analben is a senior software engineer currently working on providing cloud architecture, cloud components and APIs that enables the wider NHS and third party organisations to use the National Digital Platform.

She has more than 15 years of wide experience in software design and development within finance, NHS, consulting industries as a cloud solution architect, principal software engineer and a founder of an award-winning technology start-up. Analben started started her career as a lecturer in university teaching Computer Science and holds a M.Eng. in Computer Science and a B.Eng. in Information Technology.

Andrew is a software engineer currently working on the ReSPECT project. He is especially interested in how we can design and build our digital services to be ethical, inclusive, and compassionate.

Before joining NDS, he worked at several early-stage startups in Edinburgh, on projects ranging from games for inclusive leadership training to a platform to help connect people with social care providers.

Blythe's role has an emphasis on relationship building with the third sector and local government, as well as policy aspects related to authentication of citizens and staff so they can safely connect to the national digital platform. The fast-paced and developmental nature of our work means that he often has a perspective to bring to many other aspects of our wider efforts.

Prior to joining NES, he spent more than 15 years working at the Scottish Government in a range of roles relating to cross-sector working, technology strategy, and transformational change within the health and care sector.

Cameron is a Software Engineer working on the National Digital Platform. He's currently focused on the digital implementation of ReSPECT, an anticipatory care planning tool, as well as software to support ophthalmology workflows.

Prior to NDS, Cameron worked for Skyscanner, where he worked on their flights product and various growth initiatives.

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Doug works as part of a small team providing advice to the wider team on matters relating to compliance, such as information governance and security.  He liaises with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) information governance colleagues to keep up-to-date on changes in legislation, NHS Scotland guidance and NES policies and standards that NDS must adhere to.

Prior to joining NDS, Doug worked in NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) in health information systems and supporting health related research.

Endre is a Senior Software Engineer working on the National Digital Platform. The current focus of his team is building out platform features with the initial goal of supporting Anticipatory Care Planning.

Prior to NDS, Endre worked in the private sector on a cloud management platform that assisted large enterprise customers throughout their cloud journey, as well as increasing the automation capabilities of underwater robots at a previous role.

Franki joined NDS as Office Manager in November 2018, and her role is to oversee all office processes, support some of the core corporate/business operations, and together with a small admin team, generally make sure things run as smoothly as possible – which is where her love of lists, spreadsheets and colour-coding comes in very handy.

Before joining NDS, Franki supported the business-admin team in the Psychology directorate at NES, and her background before this was in QA Management, working as a QA & Compliance Manager for a non-profit training provider.

Geoff is the Director for NDS. Previously, Geoff was the Director of health and Social Care Integration until 2018 at the Scottish Government. Prior to this, he was Head of Mental Health and Protection of Rights Division. He has worked across a variety of roles covering housing and education policy in Scotland and politics and security with the Northern Ireland Office. 

Giulia is a Service Designer for the team. Most recently Giulia has been working as a designer for an education-related SAAS startup, and has in the past worked on projects for and with the Scottish Government and the Health and Social Care Alliance.

She has a particular interest in design ethics and methodologies such as Jobs To Be Done and Google Design Sprints and also has a background in visual design and illustration with some of her work being part of the Made in Glasgow design showcase in 2018.

Grant is a Senior Software Engineer working on the National Digital Platform. The current focus of our team is on supporting anticipatory care planning. 

Prior to NDS, he spent over 20 years building enterprise applications in the private sector in various domains including banking, telecoms and business continuity support.

Helen’s role focuses on developing relationships across both the territorial and special health boards that make up NHS Scotland.  An exciting part of the role currently is working with the NDS leadership team to lead a consultation exercise with the NHS Scotland health boards, to facilitate them linking to the National Digital Platform. 

Prior to joining NDS, Helen spent 18 years working in higher education across a variety of roles, from research to research management and strategic projects.  Helen worked closely with both University professional service colleagues, a range of national and international research funding organisations and private sector companies.  

Leading Clinical Service Design, Ijeoma’s role is to translate clinical and healthcare processes and practices into services on the National Digital Platform. She uses her healthcare knowledge and the way people interact with technical systems to help create services that better connect people and carers across all places of care. 

She joins NDS from Zinc.vc where exited a Founder role on Mission 3 ‘to add 5 high quality years to later life.’ Previously, she was the Director of Experiential Learning for the NHS Digital Academy. 

Ijeoma completed her surgical training at Mayo Clinic and holds Masters degrees in Surgery and Public Health from the University of Edinburgh, where she also leads the online Surgical Sciences MSc Communications Module. She is as a Consultant Surgeon (Locum) in General Surgery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Jonathan is a Product Manager currently working on the National Digital Platform, starting with the ReSPECT application. His role is varied and he enjoys interacting with software developers, staff and citizens to ensure we build applications which improve the NHS experience for everyone.

The majority of Jonathan’s career has been spent in the public sector in England. He worked for Public Health England as a Content Designer and Project Manager before spending time as a Product Manager in the Government Communication Service. Interested in writing, interviewing and discussing big ideas, Jonathan has also completed an MA in Journalism.

Laurel is a User Interface and Interaction Designer at NDS. She is interested in making her designs as accessible and easy to use as possible, and loves to run workshops and interact with users.



Most recently Laurel worked as a UI/UX designer and project manager for a small team, creating digital products for membership organisations.



Laurel has previously worked with Councils across Scotland through the Civtech programme, helping to provide a single and continuously evolving view of council customers and their needs, as well as helping councils to understand how well they’re meeting those needs

Liming is an Associate Software Engineer currently working on ReSPECT, an anticipatory care planning tool.  

Liming previously worked as a community physiotherapist within the NHS for nine years. She has also had previous software development experience in the housing and telecommunications sector.

Lukasz is an Interaction/UI Designer working on the National Digital Platform.

Prior to joining NDS, he worked in the Financial Services Industry. He spent 6 years at the Student Loans Company where he designed and delivered user-facing products, focusing on Human Computer Interaction, accessibility, web and government standards.

Matthew's role is to provide leadership in attracting the very best talent to NDS while continually improving the recruitment experience for each and every candidate.

Prior to joining NDS, Matthew gained over 10 years recruitment experience, most recently with Skyscanner focused on hiring Software Engineers and Data Scientists across their global locations. During his time, Skyscanner grew from 500 to over 1100 full time employees.

Nick's job is to provide communications expertise to the team here at NDS. That involves developing and implementing communications, marketing and engagement strategies that help achieve the aims and objectives of NDS. He also manages our communication channels, including digital and print media, as well as co-ordinating NDS’s social media activities. 

Prior to NDS, Nick led the public affairs function within the Communications Team at NHS Health Scotland, as well as leading part of the international public health team.  He continues to be extremely interested in international public health, having sat on the Board of a European health network, EuroHealthNet. 

Paul is a GP in Paisley and one of the clinical leads at NDS. Paul brings significant clinical informatics expertise to the team, leading on the implementation of clinical risk management, clinical modelling, terminologies, and primary care eHealth. He is a Founding Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics and a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners Health Informatics Group.

Previously, Paul was the Clinical Lead for the Scottish Information Management in Practice (SCIMP), a group which provides leadership and advice to NHS Scotland on eHealth issues affecting primary care.

Rafal is a Senior Software Engineer and part of the Integration team, which focuses on providing APIs and backend services for wider NHS and third parties into the National Digital Platform.

Before joining NDS, Rafal worked mainly as a Java backend engineer in the travel and financial domains. One of his projects involved working on a platform responsible for generating and delivering mobile barcoded boarding passes to passengers around the world.

Ratna joined as the (joint) 3rd engineer on board and enjoys being part of the team building the evolving National Digital Platform. He has worked in many industries: travel, finance, public sector (police) and is enjoying the challenge of adding health care to that list of domains.

He joined NDS to help initiatives within NHS Scotland such as bringing citizen health information needed by doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to them when they need it; and to bring citizens closer to their own health records which will ultimately contribute to building a more caring society in which individuals can take greater control of their health.

As a member of the engineering team, Robert spends his time understanding software requirements, working on the front and backend of our applications, and the infrastructure to host them.

Since leaving university Robert's worked in various different web development roles in both the public and private sector and he is appreciating being back with the NHS working with such an enthusiastic team.

Rohan leads on product and design strategy, ensuring that the people who use the things NDS makes are involved in and represented all through the process. A current focus to his work is building a team of talented designers and product managers.

Through time with Accenture, Nesta, the Edinburgh Festivals and his own company, Rohan has a background in public sector transformation, innovation processes and consumer wellbeing technology.

Under Development.

Steve is one of the clinical leads. His role is to assist with prioritisation, help the team understand the clinical environment and help the rest of the world understand NDS. Steve is driven by the need to improve care quality, improve the experience of health & care for citizens and to give staff the digital tools they need to do their work without frustration.

Steve continues to work as a Consultant in Sexual Health & HIV and is also Clinical Director for eHealth for NHS Grampian.  

Steve joined NDS in March 2019 and has responsibility for information governance and regulatory compliance and has served on the Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for the past 3 years. Prior to joining NDS, Steve was employed by NHS National Services Scotland where he led the eData Research and Innovation Services team (eDRIS) and was responsible for the running of the National Save Haven. Prior to this, he headed a number of programmes within NSS’s Information Services Division including Medical Record Linkage, Long Term Conditions, Social Care, Drug and Alcohol Misuse, and Data Standards.

Before joining ISD, Steve was Head of Department of Sociology at Queen Margaret University Collage, Edinburgh. He has a PhD in Social Policy from the University of Edinburgh.

Ute is a Service Designer with a background in social anthropology and design innovation. At NDS, she ensures health and care professionals and the people they care for are central to how new products and services are made, and lead on understanding how the National Digital Platform can be best integrated into health and care workers' workflows.

Before joining NDS, Ute worked as part of the Digital Health and Care Institute team at The Glasgow School of Art, where she explored how design innovation approaches can address complex issues around health and care.