Tim Kelsey

Tim Kelsey is an English-Australian business executive.

He is CEO of Beamtree, (formerly PKS), an Australian healthcare company (ASX:BMT) based in Sydney, Australia.

He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, between 1978 and 1983.

In 1984, he won an Exhibition to study history at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

After graduating in 1987, Kelsey worked as a freelance newspaper and radio journalist in Turkey and Iraq for The Independent, BBC and The Sunday Telegraph.

His investigation into illicit kidney trafficking between Istanbul and London in 1989 triggered a change in British law.

He also documented the use of chemical weapons against civilians during

Saddam Hussein's campaign against the Kurds in northern Iraq in a series of articles in The Independent.

He joined the launch staff of The Independent on Sunday in 1989 and covered the 1990 Gulf War as a combat pool reporter with British forces.

Kelsey is author of Dervish: The Invention of Modern Turkey, a portrait of the country in the mid-1990s which was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1996 and Penguin Books the following year.

Jan Morris, the noted travel writer, commented in her jacket review: 'An excellent travel book, offering startling and vivid insights, social, historical and political, into a Turkey that most visitors can hardly imagine.' Others described it as 'dystopian' and 'no standard travel narrative'.

During this period he also presented a number of TV documentaries including "Frontline" for Channel 4 (1994), a documentary in which he escorted Queenie Fletcher, mother of murdered policewoman Yvonne Fletcher to confront Col Gadaffi in Libya and "You Only Live Once" for the BBC (1996), an investigation into anti-ageing science.

In 1995 he joined the Sunday Times and became deputy editor of the Insight Team before being appointed news editor in 1998.

In 1999, Kelsey, then news editor at the Sunday Times, founded Dr Foster with Roger Taylor, a former Financial Times journalist, and Roger Killen, a Stanford graduate.

The organisation was set up to promote information on the quality of local health services to patients and the public.

He started his career as a journalist and went on to co-found Dr Foster in 2000, an organisation for publishing comparative hospital death rates and other measures of health quality.

Kelsey was chief executive of Dr Foster between 2000 and 2006 during which time it was reported the 9th fastest growing private company in the UK by the Sunday Times.

Kelsey explained his motives in an article in the New Statesman magazine in 2001.

In 2001, Dr Foster – named after an English nursery rhyme character - published the first annual Good Hospital Guide in the Sunday Times.

It revealed widespread variation in adjusted death rates between English hospitals and was the first time such a comparative measure of quality had been published for a national health economy.

The methodology was developed by Prof Sir Brian Jarman, director of the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College, London.

It prompted widespread media interest and stimulated a national debate over quality in healthcare.

Alan Milburn MP, then secretary of state for health, told the BBC in response to the publication: "The NHS has acted like a secret society. It has to recognise that people now expect to be treated like consumers".

The Dr Foster Hospital Guide is published annually and remains an important independent publication on quality in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals.

Since 2001, Kelsey has overseen publication of a series of similar consumer guides to individual hospital consultants, maternity services, and complementary therapists among others.

The Department of Health's acquisition of 50% of Dr Foster in 2006 was strongly criticised by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which described it as "favouritism" and a "hole and corner deal".

Kelsey is an activist for transparency and digital empowerment in public services.

In 2006, a public body - the NHS Information Centre - purchased 50% of the company and Kelsey became chair of the Executive Board of the new organisation – Dr Foster Intelligence.

In 2007, Kelsey was the architect and launch programme director of NHS Choices.

He has also worked for HIMSS, Telstra, the Australian telecoms company, and for McKinsey & Company.

In 2011, it identified a number of underperforming hospitals in England and a higher risk of avoidable mortality at the weekend.

The role - which he served between 2012 and 2015 - combined the functions of chief technology and information officer with responsibility for patient and public participation and communications.

Before his appointment in July 2012, he was the United Kingdom government's Executive Director of Transparency and Open Data leading on the development of national public data policy.

He was appointed National Information Director in health and care and chair, the National Information Board, in April 2014.

He was appointed visiting professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London in November 2015 and is co-author with Roger Taylor of "Transparency and the Open Society", which makes the case for transparency in public services and argues that it improves social and economic equity.

It was published in June 2016 by Policy Press and the University of Chicago.

In 2018, he co-founded and was appointed chair of the Global Digital Health Partnership, which brings 21 countries and the World Health Organization together in a collaboration to support implementation of digital health services worldwide.

He was previously the first National Director for Patients and Information in NHS England.

He started in the role in December 2020.

Previously, he was inaugural chief executive of the Australian Digital Health Agency.