John Chelsom (DK)
CEO of Seven Informatics
More than 30 years in health informatics, including founding the company behind the first web-based electronic health record used in England’s NHS and starting the research behind the open-source cityEHR
Based in Oxford, England
Meet John at:
Cambridge Summit 26
Presentation: TBD
Date: Tuesday, October 27
About John Chelsom
John is CEO of Seven Informatics, a role he has held since 2013, and has worked in health informatics for more than 30 years. He studied Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and holds a PhD from City University, London, where he researched artificial intelligence in medicine. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria in Canada and, since 2026, Visiting Professor at the National University of Water and Environmental Engineering in Rivne, Ukraine.
In the 1990s he worked with open standards for structured information, first SGML and then XML, in publishing, automotive and healthcare. He started a company that built the first web-based electronic health record deployed in England’s NHS, which later became the foundation of the Summary Care Record. He was also responsible for the first online version of the BMJ’s Clinical Evidence and the first XML production system for the British National Formulary.
In 2010 he started the Open Health Informatics research programme at City University, London, to look at why the NHS National Programme for IT had failed. That work led to cityEHR, an open-source health records system now running in several English hospitals and used to teach health informatics. More recently he created and directed the MS in Applied Health Informatics at Fordham University, and wrote a handbook on rural telemedicine in Ukraine for the World Bank.
About Seven Informatics
Seven Informatics is a UK company that provides consultancy, support and maintenance for cityEHR, an open-source electronic health records system. Its experts help healthcare organisations develop and deploy solutions on the platform, with tailored consultancy packages covering information modelling, configuration, installation and tuning. For mission-critical deployments, it offers support and maintenance with a range of service levels.