David Hodnett

David is the Head of Operations for the NHS App and NHS COVID Pass

Head of Operations

My father was a chief paramedic, so working for the health service runs in the family. After leaving university, I started working at the National Patient Safety Agency in London as a junior project manager of its learning portal.

I then moved up to Leeds when I joined the Department of Health. When I started at NHS ‘Connecting for Health’, the NHS was celebrating 6,000 users a month, but we are now up to a billion views a year.

I see my role as being like an octopus. I’m in the middle, making sure that I am joining up the right people and that the right conversations are happening.

The NHS App launched in January 2019, and I absolutely see myself staying with it. There are some really exciting things coming up. We get a vast amount of public feedback, and from a delivery and ops point of view, there’s no prouder moment than being able to turn people’s views, wants and wishes into a real product that they will go on to use.

A long time ago I heard the phrase, ‘It’s either evolve or die’. We are always looking at how we can refine processes and drive things forward, to continue making it easier for people to use our services.