Richard Walls

Richard Walls joined the University of Dundee as HIC Business Development & Relationship Manager in May 2019. Richard has a Masters in Research from the University of York and studied Physical Geography at The University of Liverpool.  Richard joins from a 19-year business career in commercial advisory/consulting and service provision with strategic management roles delivering environmental, planning, renewable energy, infrastructure and asset management services to clients in the UK and Internationally.  His last role was as Chief Operations Director at Natural Power (renewable energy consultants) where he performed in executive roles for 9 years across the Natural Power group with board responsibilities within Fred Olsen Limited parent group companies.  

Throughout his career his impact has been in successfully growing profitable and strongly performing business teams.  This has been with colleagues from a range of technical backgrounds from engineers and ecologists to asset managers and energy analysts to innovative software developers. He believes in clear goals, good governance and a positive performance culture to enable personal and organisational growth; which he is passionate about bringing to the Health Informatics Centre and the huge potential of big data within healthcare for the University of Dundee and the NHS.

He joins HIC at a period of exciting growth as an organisation with a key leadership role in Healthcare Informatics within Scotland and the UK sector.  The opportunity to harness, securely and safely, trusted health data in a confidential environment across a wide-range of formats to improve patient care and public health is a challenge faced keenly by HIC as part of the 4th Industrial Revolution (driven by the convergence of digital, biological, and physical innovations).  In addition; the research advances that HIC are making on data linkage, image based A.I. and automated data processing for efficient use in healthcare are a huge opportunity to all our stakeholders.

Richard has responsibility for growing and improving HIC services by leading changes in our approach to the business plan, finance, organisation and HR as well as building on and growing our external profile, contacts and relationships.