Joanna Smith, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust
Joanna Smith
Interim CIO
University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

Joanna is an accomplished international CIO. Having started her career in Pharmaceuticals, in HR then Sales & Marketing, she moved into IT in the mid 80’s and subsequently led large global programs alongside delivering IT services in Europe and Asia. In more recent years she moved into Healthcare and was CIO at the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust where she successfully delivered a large transformation program including the complete overall and replacement of their IT infrastructure and the introduction of a number of new clinical applications including digitising patient records, replacing an aging patient administration system and implementing a new electronic prescribing and medicines administration solution. She is a strong advocate for and was an early adopter of cloud technologies. In 2018 she joined Sidra, Qatar, as CIO and delivered a major restructure of their IT organisation and the upgrade of their electronic patient record solution. Since her return to the UK she has been providing consulting and advisory services to lifescience and healthcare organisations including interim CIO at Great Ormond Street Hospital and interim Group Chief Informatics Officer at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, where she played a key leadership role in their Epic EPR programme and led the development of their new Digital and Data strategies. More recently she has been supporting Lexica and Ideal Health and is currently interim CTIO at StepChange, the UK’s leading debt management charity.