Tony Young

NHS England

Prof. Tony Young is a practising frontline NHS consultant urological surgeon, Associate Medical Director at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Director of Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Anglia Ruskin University and the founder of four Med-Tech start-ups.

In September 2014 became the first National Clinical Lead for Innovation in the NHS. As Clinical Lead, Tony provides clinical leadership and support in delivering improved health outcomes in England. He drives the uptake of proven innovations across the NHS, promotes economic growth through innovation, and helps make the NHS the go-to place on the planet for medical innovation.

In 2015, Tony founded the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme. This has become the world’s largest entrepreneurial workforce development programme for clinicians and under the NHS Long Term Plan is set for a major expansion to include intrapreneurs. In the 2019 New Year's Honours list Tony was awarded the OBE for services to clinical leadership.

Tony’s portfolio covers the whole landscape of health and social care, public health, technology, digital and life sciences. This has included leadership and oversight of several programmes including: The National Innovation Accelerator, the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP), SBRI Healthcare, the Innovation and Technology Payment (ITP), the NHS Intellectual Property guideline update and Tech transfer capability, CEP In-Sites Programme, the NHSE Innovation education programme/Flexible Portfolio training scheme and the commercial innovation strategy.

Responsibilities at NHSE
1) Providing national level leadership for innovation for the NHS in England.
2) Addressing the inequality agenda - examining why there is variation of adoption of innovation across the system, recommending and designing new policies in this area.
3) Supporting economic growth from the health service, including policy development and implementation.
4) Advising government ministers, civil servants across government, NHS England, other arm’s length bodies, charities, UK and global industry, foreign governments and organisations on innovation in healthcare.