The big news in Australian digital health this week was the appointment of former Mater Health CIO and Queensland Health chief health information officer Mal Thatcher as the Australian Digital Health Agency’s new chief technology officer. The job calls for both strategic and operational leadership of the agency’s infrastructure operations division at a critical time as it looks to modernise the national infrastructure and replatform the My Health Record, starting with its API gateway.

Dr Thatcher is an excellent choice, having had a career in both strategy and operational IT, and he is very well respected and liked in the industry. He knows his stuff so we wish him well as a new executive team is built to replace the initial one put together by Richard Royle and Tim Kelsey. All of that team has now departed, with new CEO Amanda Cattermole given space to select her own.