Myles Ward moved from chief technology officer at New Zealand’s Inland Revenue Department to chief executive of healthAlliance in 2015. CIO reported the appointment on 7 September and said Ward would join on 16 November; a later CIO account said he took over in November. This is a historical appointment, not a current leadership update.
Who became healthAlliance CEO in 2015?
healthAlliance Board chair David Clarke announced Ward’s appointment the week before CIO published its 7 September 2015 report. Ward had been Inland Revenue’s CTO for nearly three years. Clarke said, “healthAlliance is at an important point of change, and we look forward to Myles’ creative drive and leadership,” as quoted in CIO’s appointment report.
The report said Ward was expected to join healthAlliance on 16 November 2015. A later CIO interview published on 5 February 2018 described him as having taken over in November.
How Ward’s career led from CTO to CEO
Ward’s Inland Revenue career began in July 2006, when he joined as an IT manager. He held that position for more than four years, then became general manager of IT operations and services before serving as CTO. Before Inland Revenue, he worked at Westpac as head of business management. CIO also reported that he had spent time in Inland Revenue’s Disability directorate, giving him some exposure to the complexities of the health sector.
Clarke’s appointment announcement, as reported by CIO, attributed more than 15 years of senior leadership experience to Ward. The report also said Ward held a business degree from Massey University and a Master of Public Administration through Monash University and Victoria University. It described his experience in large-scale ICT operations and transformation, business and strategic planning, customer and people focus, innovation, and collaboration as relevant to the appointment. Those were the board chair’s stated rationale and reported credentials, not evidence of results achieved after Ward took the role.
What healthAlliance did in 2015
At the time of the appointment, healthAlliance was jointly owned by four district health boards in New Zealand’s northern region: Northland, Waitemata, Auckland, and Counties Manukau. It provided IT and non-clinical services to those boards, and had begun providing procurement services to all 20 district health boards in July 2014.
Rank #2
CIO’s 2015 report described the scale of the organization’s technology operations this way:
- A 273-person IT team working across eight locations.
- Support for more than 27,500 district health board staff.
- Services spanning 10 hospital sites, 94 community sites, and 266 dental sites.
These are figures reported in 2015, not current totals. The article does not establish whether the organization’s ownership, structure, or scale later changed.
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What Ward later said about the CEO role
In CIO’s 5 February 2018 interview, Ward reflected on the broader demands of leading a shared-services organization in healthcare. He said the CEO’s relationships with the chair, board, stakeholders, and customers were vital to maintaining confidence in the company’s ability to deliver. He also emphasized the role of the executive team and organizational culture.
Ward discussed technology partners and cloud-based solutions, including APIs, as ways to support regional digital goals. These comments describe his perspective in 2018; they were not part of the 2015 appointment announcement.
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