Sydney Local Health District looks for new CIO

Sydney Local Health District is seeking a new chief information officer and director of digital health innovation after Richard Taggart left the position at the beginning of the year.

Calvary Health Care’s national director of information technology and digital transformation Richard Taggart.

Taggart was appointed Calvary Health Care’s national director of information technology and digital transformation in February.

Although a new title, Taggart’s position at Calvary has similar responsibilities to its previous head of digital, a role vacated in February by David Stupple who left after 19 years, and is now with Ramsay Health Care. 

Sydney Local Health District has its director of clinical information systems Alexandra Wagstaff as acting CIO and director of digital health innovation while it seeks a permanent appointment.

The successful candidate will focus on large-scale changes like the digitisation of the agency’s corporate and clinical health records. 

According to the job posting, this will include supporting the “single electronic health record strategy in collaboration with eHealth,” - a project that will unify NSW's core clinical and laboratory information management systems under a statewide, single digital patient record

Taggart held the CIO position at Sydney Local Health District for four years. Before that, he was Apple’s healthcare lead for Australia and New Zealand.

He is also the current chair of the medical research fund initiative the Australian Stroke and Heart Research Accelerator.