Senior Scientific Advisor

The Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) provides clinical and professional advice and leadership in healthcare science across the health and care system, is head of profession for a workforce of over 56,000 working in healthcare science in the NHS, embracing more than 54 separate scientific specialisms. The Office of the CSO encourages better use of science to address our greatest health challenges and shape technological advances to help ensure that people are living happier and healthier lives. The NHS healthcare science workforce use science and their technical skills to help prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases. They are in a unique position as a scientific workforce, working as part of an integrated health system that is a world leader in transformational science such as genomics, to deliver this work. The team also work to develop the professional, clinical and system leadership capacity and capability of healthcare scientists, who are well placed to provide frontline scientific leadership and science-based intelligence for innovation, service planning and delivery. By ensuring the NHS operates at the limits of science, the Office of the CSO can improve the integration of services, develop new ways of working for delivering care, give patients greater control of their own care and improve the NHS’s ability to undertake research and innovation, and adoption of new state of the art health technology.

We are looking for a Senior Scientific Advisor who will work as part of a dynamic team delivering an effective service supporting managers and staff across the OCSO and Medical Directorate, and support the delivery of NHS England’s objectives by providing expertise and professional leadership both to and from the scientific and diagnostic community.

As a senior leader, your role will work closely with the Chief Scientific Officer and Deputy CSO ,offering scientific advice, expertise and leading high profile scientific initiatives across England.

The post holder(s) will be part of a broad leadership team, provide evidence-based advice and guidance to the NHS and wider healthcare and social system inclusive of science in health and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The individual will provide Healthcare science advice into the CSO office particularly as we finalise the HCS strategy and supporting the Chief Scientific Officer’s programme team and the whole programme of work. The post holder will lead and advise on work relating to scientific, clinical leadership, diagnostics, accreditation and professional regulation, as well as other work areas as required. Working in collaboration, the post holder will adopt an integrated approach with colleagues across the system, influencing and advising the system to improve quality and outcomes for patients and contribute to the embedding of innovation in healthcare.

As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a ‘home’ office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you

Working for our organisation

The NHS England board have set out the top-level purpose for the new organisation to lead the NHS in England to deliver high-quality services for all, which will inform the detailed design work and we will achieve this purpose by:

Enabling local systems and providers to improve the health of their people and patients and reduce health inequalities.
Making the NHS a great place to work, where our people can make a difference and achieve their potential.
Working collaboratively to ensure our healthcare workforce has the right knowledge, skills, values and behaviours to deliver accessible, compassionate care
Optimising the use of digital technology, research, and innovation
Delivering value for money.

Colleagues with a contractual office base are expected to spend, on average, at least 40% of their time working in-person.

The post holder will develop effective strategy for promoting innovation across the NHS. Working closely with colleagues, ensuring coherent strategy and will:

Drive the strategy for, supporting and ensuring alignment across the system
Drive reform and support organisational change and uptake of initiatives that support excellence
Develop and communicate the vision for Healthcare Science, science in health, the CSO team and strategy and operational policies to support this vision
Engage with key strategic regional and national policy makers to inform development of strategy and policies
Identify examples of national and international best practice and to ensure that NHS England benefits from relevant innovations in healthcare
Support development by developing the innovation infrastructure and capacity in organisations
Develop and champion new initiatives or projects as necessary
Working with providers and clinical experts to design new training product Provide expertise of best practice methodologies regulatory requirements, policy imperatives, innovation and technological developments and stakeholders knowledge.

For further information, please see the attached job description.