"The Health service has gone through quite a large reform over the last couple of years, in terms of the commercialisation of it. There has been a trend towards organisations having to promote themselves, market themselves. Social media and the 'amazon ratings approach' are also changing the way people view service providers and service providers need to change," he said.

"The skills you need in order to survive in this new market place are quite different to the old fashioned NHS IT department. Good CIOs are good CIOs. They should be able to come in and run a department, as long as they engage with the business and realise that dealing with patients gives it a different spin."

, Computerworld UK recently revealed that the NHS is in discussions with the White House about how best to open up its public data for re-use.

The US' deputy chief technology officer for government innovation, Chris Vein, said that the UK government is effectively aiming to 'blow up' the NHS as it is currently structured and rebuild it, and plans are set to include opening up datasets.