Liz is Vice Chair of the Board, Convener of the Clinical Governance and Assurance Committee and Vice Convener of the Remuneration and Appointments Committee.
Liz worked for the Scottish Government Health & Social Care Directorates as Head of Strategic Planning and Clinical Priorities until her retirement in 2017. Since then she has remained active in health and social care as a Trustee Board member, then Vice Chair of Genetic Alliance UK. In 2020 she took over as Chair of the Board and in short-term targeted project roles with, among others, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde where she was the Transformation Policy Lead for their Moving Forward Together innovation and change programme.
In Scottish Government, Liz was responsible for a wide range of national clinical priorities and other policy developments, including the National Clinical Strategy, the Cancer Strategy, the Diabetes strategy, neurological and long-term conditions, chronic pain and the Scottish Rare Disease Plan. She was a member of the SG implementation group and of the UK Government’s Rare Disease Forum and NHS England Rare Disease Advisory Group. She was the Government sponsor of Scotland’s National Services Division which commissions all national (including across the UK) specialist and screening services.
Liz contributed to the establishment of the Innovative Healthcare Delivery Programme (IHDP) based at the Farr Institute in Edinburgh and the Scottish Genomes Partnership. She chaired the implementation group that saw the introduction of robotic surgery in Scotland, and was a member of several other policy and implementation groups such as the development of the now-established major trauma service/network, which was, in turn, a part of the work of the National Planning Forum of which she was also a member and policy lead. She was also responsible for the SG’s Armed Forces and Veterans Health Care policy, including overseeing the fulfilment of the UK Armed Forces Covenant and the SG’s Commitments for veterans. Among other developments, this involved leading the work to establish Scotland’s state-of-the-art prosthetics service which was set up in response to the Murrison Report. She was also the SG policy representative on the MoD’s UK Committee led by the Surgeon General to oversee the implementation of the UK Covenant.
In her personal life, Liz is a grandmother to three granddaughters, all growing up too fast! She enjoys reading, particularly history, and is working her way through various Open University modules in the social sciences field, the most recent on Criminology, results awaited. She plans to study public law and criminal law. She was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to people with rare diseases in the King’s Birthday Honours List on Saturday 15 June, 2024.
