Obituary: Charlie Knox

Charlie was the son of Jean and the late Charlie, the fourth of five children, and lived in Edinburgh all his life. He attended Broomhouse Primary and Boroughmuir Secondary schools and was a member of the Boys Brigade. On leaving school he entered The Scottish Office and worked in audit before moving to join the early days of SOCS, the Scottish Office Computer Services. He rose to become assistant director and became a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He also took an Open University degree, mainly in maths but including arts subjects and opening up new passions in opera, literature and philosophy.

In 1987 Charlie was recruited into the NHS to become the director of the Directorate of Health Service Information Systems (DHSIS) which had been established within the Common Services Agency to give a more strategic and delivery-focussed drive to the development of Information Technology in the service in Scotland. He spent most of his first year touring Scotland and listening to senior colleagues in general and computing management in the health boards. Thus began a strong and lasting partnership between "the centre" and local NHS bodies which survived the many organisational restructurings to the end of Charlie's career.

He had inherited a number of national IT systems which, with his support, were further developed, and new ones were added. These included those for patient indexing and maintenance of GPs lists, general medical practice, hospital patient administration and a number of screening and recall systems including those for childhood immunisations, cervical cytology, breast screening and bowel cancer.

Many of these systems were further developed with additional clinical facilities to support the strategic aim of supporting direct patient care. He also recruited a range of professional staff and established small central teams to support national IT procurements, most of which were under EU regulations, and data communications enabling the acquisition and management of standard cost-effective IT networks. These began to revolutionise the delivery of IT in support of clinical services.

By 1995 NHS policy centred on competitive tendering and contracting out of non-core services and IT was no exception. This resulted in the transfer of a large number of staff to the private sector while he, with a small number of staff, moved into to the Scottish Office Health Department in St Andrew's House, while remaining NHS employees, to concentrate on policy and strategy.

NHS Scotland is small enough to achieve much on a corporate basis which IT colleagues in England could only dream of and many of the successes were due to Charlie's leadership and political acumen. He successfully argued for budget increases and showed great skill in managing available funds, balancing between innovation and ongoing national services and between central and local allocations.

In 2000 Scottish Care Information was launched by Charlie and his colleagues, resulting in several successful products. These include an electronic patient health record which draws on operational systems including those for patient administrative details, clinical letters and laboratory results; and a set of facilities to enable secure clinical communications between health organisations, originally developed for referral letters from GPs to hospital consultants. More specialised packages were also developed including the Diabetic Shared Care System and the Emergency Care Summary which can be made available in an emergency no matter where in Scotland the patient is being treated.

Charlie retired early in 2007. He was known for his integrity, fairness, unflappability and hard work. To his staff he was a good boss, colleague and friend, encouraging and supportive. He had many friends and interests including bowls, golf and music and was a lifelong Hearts supporter. He would have seen this tribute as an appreciation of the work and achievements of the whole NHS Scotland IT and electronic health community which he did so much to develop and nourish.

Charlie is survived by his much loved best friend and wife, Margaret, and his loving daughter, Audrey as well as his mother, brothers and sisters.