Katie Davis is to step down as managing director for NHS Informatics at the Department for Health.
Davis will for a short while continue to support Tim Kelsey, who has taken the position of National Director for Patients and Information in the NHS Commissioning Board. She stepped into the senior IT leadership role at the NHS last year following the departure of former CIO Christine Connelly, and was a key player in producing the new NHS Information Strategy.
Davis said: "I am very confident that we have the right future strategy, and the right people to deliver it. While I will miss everyone very much, it is the right time for me to move on so the future system we have designed can begin to work in the way in which we have designed it."
David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, said: "Katie has made a major contribution to the NHS, in promoting both the sharing and management of information to support better patient care and outcomes.
"She has made great strides in developing a strategy for the delivery of information and IT support to the future of health and care services and I wish her well for the future."
In October last year Davis told Computer Weekly that she did not expect her current position within the department to become permanent. She said her role was to manage transition as the NHS National Programme for IT is disbanded.
"I don't think my role translates that easily into the future. I see it more as making sure we've got the right governance, the right levers and incentives to make the future marketplace work as well as it needs to," she said.
