The 2025 recipient of the Leadership Excellence Award for Scotland is Mark Fleming.

In Scotland, a frontline nurse has turned digital expertise into safer, more aligned care. After years in hospital and community settings, Mark Fleming was seconded to build integrated care pathways so patients would not need to retell painful stories and clinicians would have access to the right information at the right time.

By 2007, he was coordinating national pathways with Healthcare Improvement Scotland, setting standards across adult and elderly services and establishing data frameworks that guided real improvement. From 2014, he brought the clinical voice into Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Directorate, and today he bridges policy and practice as an NHS Nurse Consultant.

He now leads for Scotland on the 5-Countries Digital Nursing Leadership Group, champions digital workflow, documentation, and self-management, and shares learning internationally, always keeping people at the centre of every system he helps shape.

Mark Fleming’s career exemplifies service, strategy, and the transformative potential of digital leadership in health care.

Congratulations to Mark Fleming.