Tim Kelsey

This article is part of the Health Portal project of Spinwatch.

This article is part of the Revolving Door project of Spinwatch.

Tim Kelsey is chief executive of the new Australian Digital Health Agency which is responsible for all national digital health services and systems. His appointment was announced in August 2016.

Prior to that he was briefly director of Telstra health (Jan-July 2016).

He was, before that, the national director for patients and information at NHS England from July 2012.

And from 2010 to 2012 Kelsey was a senior expert at management consultancy McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey he was information and public services lead, focusing on helping 'public and private sector organisations develop consumer information strategies'. In May 2011 he was seconded to the Cabinet Office as executive director of transparency and open data on an assignment supporting development of national strategy.

In 2000 he was the founder, CEO and executive chairman of Dr Foster, a firm which analyses and publishes patients outcomes in the NHS. In 2007 he launched NHS Choices, the national online health information service which now reports around 20 million unique users a month.

After graduating from university in 1988, Kelsey began working as a reporter at the Independent and the Independent on Sunday and then in 1995 at the Sunday Times.

Health tech cheerleader

While director of NHS England, Kelsey was in charge of its highly-controversial care.data program, a data sharing operation that was criticised as 'privacy-invasive'. As reported by The Register, Kelsey he went on the record in 2014 saying that “"no one who uses a public service should be allowed to opt out of sharing their records. Nor can people rely on their record being anonymised.”

Kelsey also courted, and was courted by health tech companies. Below is a list of some of the companies he met while at NHS England (2013-15):

2013:

• TLG Communications: TLG was a lobbying firm taken over by consultants FTI. TLG's lobbying clients included Prudential, Serco and BT. It's not known who FTI lobbies for.
• 23andMe, privately held personal genomics and biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California.
• WPP: Global giant in PR, advertising and other communications
• Private Healthcare Information Network, which 'exists to collect and publish data on UK private healthcare providers for consumers, chaired by Andrew Vallance-Owen, the former chief medical officer of Bupa. PHIN's former director of operations was Sam Meikle, former ‘change management, technology & innovation expert’ at The Social Kinetic (see below). She was also appointed to the CQC's Intelligence Expert Advisory Group in 2013.
• Which?
• GNS Healthcare, Privately held US-based data analytics company. It analyses data for clients in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare provider, health insurance etc industries.
• The Social Kinetic, Communications firm hired by NHS England to ‘help the NHS behave more like Google’. Claire Cater, founder of The Social Kinetic explains: "When Google innovates it both uses people from within and looks around the world. It allows its people to spend the time to invest and develop that innovation, with a focus on it having a tangible benefit to society." The Social Kinetic's then ‘analyst and superbrain’, Alex Kafetz was also 'strategy & insight' chief at Kelsey’s wife’s firm ZPB. The Social Kinetic's Greg Moulds was also ‘involved in the delivery of global health strategy for KPMG, led by Mark Britnell, having previously supported Britnell's thought-leadership communications.
• Salesforce, American cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco, California.
• Google
• Jointly Health (now called Sentrian, California-based remote monitoring analytics company (launched at Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine Conference); meeting with Jack Kreindler.
• Telstra, Australian telecoms giant, which went on to hire Kelsey. According to documents released under FOI law, Kelsey and Telstra were introduced by Mark Britnell at KPMG.

2014:

• Hansa Capital, meeting with investor William Salomon of Hansa Cap
• EMIS Group
• XIM
• 11 Health, wireless medical device company; meeting with Michael Seres
• Deontics, 'AI' firm set up to 'commercialise Clinical Quality and Clinical Decision Support Technologies'.
• Buddy App, described as a 'health and wellbeing app that utilises SMS text technology to engage individuals in their care, by recording their mental, emotional and physical wellbeing in-between sessions, by sending appointment reminders and goals'.
• Health Unlocked, described as a 'social network for health'
• Tesco, discussion on 'Improving consumer service and shared learning'. Further meeting with Tesco's Matt Atkinson to discuss 'Learning from private sector - Social marketing'
• UCL Partners Executive, for an 'Informatics Next Steps' meeting
• Health UK, meeting with Howard Lyons and Al Mulley, to discuss 'Ongoing work with UKTI/Health UK'.
• Nuffield Council
• Nuffield Trust
• British Medical Association, Royal College of GPs,
• All Party Parliamentary Group on Medical Research
• Bryan Sivak, then CTO at US Department of Health and Human Services to discuss 'intergovernmental work'
• All Communities for Health Roundtable, New York
• Reducing Health & Digital Inequality Roundtable, House of Commons

2015:

• Index Ventures, Europe and San Francisco based global venture capital firm, focused on making investments in information technology companies. Employed Rohan Silva, ex- senior policy adviser to the UK Prime Minister David Cameron
• John Taysom, venture capitalist in tech startups
• Nanthealth, controversial Californian diagnostics company founded by US billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong
• Athenahealth, US firm that provides cloud-based services for health care and point-of-care mobile apps.
• McKinsey & Company, Kelsey's former employer; to discuss 'National Information Board'
• Telstra, Kelsey's future employer, Australian telecoms giant
• Deloitte, meeting with NHS regulator Monitor, now called NHS Improvement to discuss 'data services'
• Boston Consulting Group, for a 'transformation and innovation update'
• Accenture, to discuss 'digital innovation'
• RAND Europe
• Digitas LBi, part of Publicis Groupe, is a global marketing and technology agency.
• WPP
• Chris Powell, chair of Dr Foster and former Nesta chair; meeting to discuss NHS England's 'Five year forward view'. Powell ran a workshop with WPP in February 2015 for NHS England on its 'Five year forward view'.
• Nesta; Kelsey also attended Nesta's 'Personalised Health and Care 2020 Event' in 2015; Nesta's trustees include WPP's CEO of Government and Public Sector Practice, Michelle Harrison.
• 'TP Dinner'; according to documents released under FOI law, a series of dinners, refered to as 'TP dinners', were set up to ‘put Tim [Kelsey] and his ideas in front of some the best and brightest minds and subject-matter experts'. It’s not know what ‘TP’ refers to. The dinner in January 2015, for example, was to discuss 'opportunities for digital in mental health' and attendees included: Pam Garside of the Cambridge Health Network, which counts Kelsey's partner's strategy and communication firm, ZPB as a commercial partner; Jake Arnold-Forster, first CEO of Dr Foster (the firm that Kelsey founded, which was sold to Kelsey's future employer Telstra in Mar 2015). Arnold-Forster is also an advisor to ZPB, the lobbying firm run by Kelsey's partner, and a number of private healthcare companies; Jen Hyatt, founder of digital mental healthcare service Big White Wall; Paul Farmer, CEO of charity Mind; Matthew Patrick, CEO of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust; Victoria Betton, founder director of mHabitat, which 'supports digital innovation in health and social care'; Peter Hames, CEO of Big Health, a digital medicine company; Clare Gerada, former Chair of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Barnaby Perks, founder of Ieso Digital Health, provides online access to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy; Chris Hollis, director of MindTech Healthcare Technology Co-operative is a national centre focused on the development of new technology for mental healthcare.
• Cambridge Health Network
• Sian Jarvis, long standing Director General of Communications at the Department of Health to 2011, and former head of comms at Asda to 2013, Jarvis then set up consultancy Jarvis & Bo specialising in health and communications and 'continued working for Asda on developing their health strategy'. She was also a director of med-tech business The Learning Clinic (run by Roger Killen, co-founder with Kelsey of Dr Foster), and advises the health technology company System C, while 'supporting a portfolio of other high profile corporate and charity sector clients on public health issues and brand reputation'.
• ASDA
• Tesco
• Virgin
• Care UK
• King’s Health Partners
• Health Foundation
• Medical Technology Group, coalition of patient groups, research charities and medical device manufacturers
• Allscripts, US firm that provides practice management and electronic health record technology
• Babylon, subscription health service provider that enables users to have virtual consultations with doctors and health care professionals via text and video messaging through its mobile application, founded by Ali Parsa, former managing partner of Circle Health, a private hospital managament company.
• TPP, UK based health IT company
• Blackberry
• Big White Wall
• I Want Great Care
• 77 Group and Tictrac, a 'connected health platform that engages people in their health through their data'
• Govlab, New York University
• UK India Business Council
• Australian health tech interests (on a trip to Australia): Code for Australia (Australia); UnitingCare Health (Australia); Mooroolbark Group (M-Group) (Australia); McKinsey (Australia); Monash Health (Australia); Telstra (Australia)
• MacMillan Cancer Support
• ZPB Associates, healthcare strategy, marketing and communications firm that employed Kelsey's partner Hilary Robinson as strategy director. Clients included: The Point of Care Foundation, Sodexo, ]]Outcomes Based Healthcare]], ]]British Lung Foundation]], Healthcare at Home, plus it managed the AHSN Network, through which the fifteen Academic Health Science Networks collaborate and engage nationally.

Resources

See: The Corporate Capture of the NHS

• Tamasin Cave, The privatising cabal at the heart of our NHS Spinwatch, 1 April 2015.