David Hancock (pictured) has been elected to the new role of vendor co-chair at INTEROPen, the action group created to accelerate the development of open standards to enable health and care systems to interoperate with each other.

Hancock is healthcare executive advisor at software company InterSystems. He has more than 20 years’ experience of working in the health tech industry, having held senior roles at Oracle Corporation and Orion Health before moving to InterSystems in 2015. He has been a member of the techUK health and social care council for two years and represented the trade body on the INTEROPen board until it decided to create the vendor co-chair position.

Hancock said: “INTEROPen is now looking at evolving its membership model to support a stronger focus on the take-up and use of standards to support patient care and service transformation. It is not enough to be able to define standards.

“But to move to the next level, the organisation needs to become vendor-driven, because the best way to make standards stick is to get them incorporated into vendor products. That is why INTEROPen made the decision to create a vendor co-chair and, for me, the role is all about driving adoption.”