Job Title : Director of Technology Strategy

Organization : National Health Service Technology Office

In his role as director of technology strategy for the NHS Technology Office, Mark Ferrar helps serve the technology needs of 1.3 million employees in the NHS.

Ferrar’s role sees him managing some of the largest technology supplier contracts in the UK: the NHS is Microsoft’s largest global account, Novell’s largest customer and Oracle’s second largest global customer.

Under Ferrar’s stewardship the NHS has seen the widespread introduction of barcoding and RFID technologies to help the health service keep track of equipment and patients.

He chairs the government’s CTO Council, the cross-Government Architecture Review Board and is a member of the Public Sector Infrastructure Team’s executive group. He is closely involved in the G-Cloud initiative.

For the past two years Ferrar has sat on the Technology Strategy Board’s network security innovation platform steering group, which aims to allocate government funding to support innovation and growth in the UK IT security industry.

Ferrar joined the NHS in 2004 after 17 years with ICI, the international chemicals and paint company.

Outside of work Ferrar, a graduate of Liverpool University, enjoys mountain biking, canoeing and hill-walking with his family near to his home in the North East of England.