About the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO)

The Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) is head of profession for the 50,000 healthcare scientists working in the NHS, embracing more than 50 separate scientific specialisms.

The Office of the CSO encourage 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 help make this happen.

The team also work to develop the clinical leadership capacity and capability of healthcare scientists, who are well placed to provide frontline scientific leadership and science-based intelligence for 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 structures for delivering care, give patients greater control of their own care and improve the NHS’s ability to undertake research and innovation and raising the game of health technology.

Find out more about our CSO programmes.

Contact us

Email us at England.cso@nhs.net.

Follow us on twitter @WeHCScientists.

Professor Dame Sue Hill, Chief Scientific Officer @CSOSue