Highland Marketing welcomes Natasha Phillips to its advisory board

Former national CNIO and founder of Future Nurse will bring passion for digital transformation to debates and discussions    

Natasha Phillips has joined the Highland Marketing advisory board, to contribute her passion for nursing and digital transformation to its debates on health and care technology and the guidance it provides to the agency and its clients.

Phillips, who stepped down from her role as NHS England’s first chief nursing information officer last year to found her own company, Future Nurse, said: “My ambition for Future Nurse is as it was in my national role: to ensure nurses and midwives are well served with technology that makes it easier for them to do the right thing for the people in their care.

“We will do this by bringing nursing experience and expertise to all aspects of digital transformation of health and care.”  

“With its advisory board, Highland Marketing brings together an experienced and talented group for relevant and pertinent discussions. In publishing those discussions widely, it encourages further conversations and debate, influencing decisions made. I am delighted to be part of this group, bringing a wider clinical perspective to the discussion.

“It is my ambition that wherever discussions about digital health and care policy are happening, a nurse, and indeed a diverse group of clinicians, are actively involved.”

Phillips started her nursing career in London and has held many senior operational and strategic positions with a focus on improvement.

She has led multiple technology and data enabled projects including Hospital@Night and the nationally recognised Exemplar Accreditation Improvement programme before she became CNIO at UCLH, leading the successful deployment of an enterprise wide EPR.

As the first CNIO for England, she led the development of What Good Looks Like Framework for Nursing, the Digital Clinical Safety Strategy, and a Review of the Preparation of Nurses and Midwives for the Digital Age (awaiting publication).

During her tenure, Phillips transformed the landscape of digital nursing leadership establishing a national team, a CNIO in every region, increasing the number of CNIO’s and NIO’s in provider organisations, and developing a vibrant community of over 1,300 digital nurses on NHS Futures.

Future Nurse aims to bring nursing, midwifery & allied health professional priorities to the centre of digital and bio tech innovation, through a mix of practical project delivery and a global network of nurses, med tech, and bio tech employees who work together to develop the next generation of technology.

“If you look at the red thread that runs through my career, it is a passion to improve services and the care we deliver to patients,” Phillips said. “I realised early-on that data is essential for improvement and that digital technology is critical for clinical colleagues who want to improve care.

“So, my interest is not in IT, but in using data and digital to make the NHS better, improve the lives of clinicians, and make sure that patients get the great care we all want to deliver for them.”

Highland Marketing is an established PR, marketing and content agency with more than 20 years’ experience in health and care tech and med tech. It employs or works with more than 30 experts in strategy, content creation, PR, and sales acceleration.

The Highland Marketing advisory board is made up of NHS and industry experts. It holds regular debates on hot topics in health and care tech and provides advice and guidance to the agency and its clients on market issues and effective communications approaches.

Susan Venables, co-founder and client services director at Highland Marketing, said: “It is always a privilege to welcome such skilled and qualified individuals like Natasha Phillips to join our advisory board. We work with many health tech companies who want to bring a clinical perspective to their work. But it is important to remember that ‘clinician’ does not just mean ‘doctor’.

“As Natasha has already reminded us, nurses, midwives and allied professionals make up two-thirds of the NHS workforce, and she will bring a strong and experienced voice for them to discussions about the future of digital – which is more than ever up for debate as we go into an election year.”