Sam Hall, director of primary, community & mental health digital services at Digital Health and Care Wales, offered some insight into recent digital achievements and future priorities, noting: “Across Wales, the focus has been on delivering national digital services that are scalable, secure, and aligned to service need.”
The NHS App is a key example, according to Sam, enabling patients to access prescriptions, appointments, and health information digitally, and delivered in “close partnership with primary care” with a strong emphasis on safe adoption and equitable access, including the introduction of the Welsh Identity Verification Service.
Alongside this, we have strengthened the national platforms and infrastructure underpinning services across primary, community and mental health,” Sam told us. “The priority now is to optimise and embed existing services. This includes improving usability and accessibility, ensuring consistent deployment, and supporting frontline teams to integrate digital into routine practice. Our commitment to user-centred design, including establishing our central UCD team of experienced practitioners, ensures the user-voice is embedded in everything we do.”
Looking ahead, there will be an increased focus on the use of data and insight to drive improvement and reduce variation, Sam shared, with partnership working across health boards, primary care, and the Welsh government remaining central to the approach. “Over the next 12 months, the focus will be on strengthening core services and extending their value,” Sam continued. “This includes targeted enhancements, improving digital access for patients, and enabling more joined-up care. At the same time, we will continue to ensure national platforms are resilient and able to support future transformation. Digital will play a key role in addressing wider system challenges, including demand, workforce pressure and inequality.”
Grant Healey, digital, data, and technology senior project manager at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, discussed the health board’s strong focus on building a more integrated and interoperable digital ecosystem with EPR at its centre. “We have a variety of EPRs currently in use, so the aim is to try and move away from fragmented systems and toward something that better supports joined-up care,” Grant reported. “Alongside this is a real focus on improving data quality, consistency, and accessibility, so our data can be used to support clinical decision making, operational management, and longer-term planning.” Ultimately, ambitions are to enhance patient care and experience through better use of digital, and to strengthen digital infrastructure to improve resilience, he added.
Over the last 12 months, a key focus has been the implementation of an EPR in one of Aneurin Bevan’s services, Grant told us, which doesn’t align with overall work to reduce fragmentation, but which supports the way in which that service works. “A big priority within that is ensuring data is captured accurately and consistently at the point of care,” he highlighted, “and by improving that foundation, we’ve been able to develop better reporting and insights – it’s all SNOMED coded and aligned with RCN digital record keeping policies, etc.”
This work has “significantly improved” data quality, according to Grant, with the impact being tangible in clinicians and service leads now having better visibility over patient journeys. “It also allows for improved forecasting and service planning,” he offered, “as the data is more reliable and structured, helping with the move toward a more proactive data-driven approach to managing pathway and demand. The EPR has forecasting in-built, as well, so as the service keeps using the system and the software learns from their data, it will allow them to forecast better and identify trends, which is good in terms of looking at business cases and how they can further develop the service.”
Looking ahead to the next 12 months and beyond, Grant talked about priorities including EPR optimisation, increasing the use of data for population health and strategic planning, and developing overall maturity across services. “Our new strategy is due to be released this year, and I expect it to set ambitions for increasing HIMMS INFRAM and EMRAM scores to around three or four,” he elaborated. “From my personal perspective, I’ll be looking at how we deliver technologies, with a strong emphasis on benefits realisation, ensuring change is embedded into practice, particularly with EPR, focusing on user-centred design, and encouraging a culture of continuous improvement.”
There’s “growing recognition”, Grant notes, of the role of data quality in the move toward introducing technologies such as AI. “A lot of effort goes into strengthening those foundations so the insights are reliable and actionable,” he said. “Looking ahead, the direction for AI is very much aligned with becoming a more data-driven organisation. There’s clear potential in areas like automation to reduce administrative burden. At the moment, we use Robotic Process Automation to help remove that burden, but we haven’t quite introduced AI as in Large Language Models at the moment; there’s an eye on where those could be implemented.”
The key to unlocking all of this, Grant continues, is ensuring the fundamentals are right. “AI is only as effective as the data it relies on, so from my perspective, we need to look at structured data capture, good governance and transparency, and embedding AI in a way that is safe, ethical, and builds trust with staff, with a clear focus on augmenting, rather than replacing, clinical expertise.”
Karen Smith, digital portfolio project manager at Velindre University NHS Trust, joined us to share updates on recent work and upcoming plans, with a particular focus on the new Velindre Cancer Centre, a digitally-enabled hospital designed around “fundamentally reimagining cancer care for Wales”. Karen said: “As much as we are doing a lot of digital work, it’s not about digitising the cancer centre; it’s about redesigning how care feels, making life easier, and improving the patient experience.” After a long career in the financial sector, Karen talked about seeing the opportunity advertised for her current role, and jumping at the chance to “really make a difference” where it’s needed. “I feel honoured to have been chosen for this position,” she shared.
The new Velindre Cancer Centre is scheduled to open in Spring 2027, Karen told us, “and as far as the tech side of things, we’re really looking at what our patients want, talking to them, undertaking focus groups, surveys, and making sure the tools we choose are actually going to make their lives better”. That also includes thinking about how best to cater for those who might be at risk of digital exclusion, she noted, as well as bringing staff along on the journey. “We’re taking our workforce on the journey with us, helping them understand what is changing and, more importantly, what the benefits will be for both staff and patients,” she continued. “The digitisation of our paper medical records is a project I am particularly passionate about. It represents one of the most significant digital transformations the trust has undertaken and marks the beginning of our journey towards a paperless future. As records are digitised following completion of a patient’s pathway, clinicians and support teams will have faster, easier, and more secure access to information, reducing the time spent locating and preparing paper notes. It’s about ensuring information moves at the speed of care, not at the speed of paper.”
Connectivity is a big issue, not just for Velindre, but for the whole of Wales, Karen reflected, with the trust moving to introduce a HP Aruba enterprise grade network with full Wi-Fi coverage across the hospital, and a digitally distributed 4G and 5G antenna system to tackle dead spots. “We’re working with all the major networks to build the system that will not only give staff access to information at their fingertips, but will allow patients to remain connected with their family.” Other initiatives around improving efficiency and flow include a hybrid mail project outsourcing printing and letters to a third party, the replacement of bleeps with a “more-real time” communication tool, and a real-time location system to support with tracking equipment around the cancer centre. “We’re running a pilot at the moment for Ambient Voice, with hopes of improving consultation speed and turnaround times,” she added.
Patients will benefit from digital check-in kiosks allowing them to check themselves in, and from a “state of the art” entertainment and engagement system, giving them control over their environment, including the lighting and air conditioning in their room. “That will also offer wellness and mindfulness exercises for them to do from their bed, and then education in terms of their treatment or pathway, and the usual things like TV and radio, which will be free for all,” Karen said. “We’ll look to push surveys through them to understand what our patients’ experiences are, and where we can improve.”
The biggest achievement over the last 12 months has probably been in the preparatory work that has gone into planning and developing work for the new cancer centre, Karen told us. “The tender processes have gone really well, and they’re coming to an end, so we can start to move on to delivery – we’ve chosen really great suppliers, so that will help to have that network around us, because there’s a lot that needs to be delivered in the next 12 months!”
Jonny Sammut, director of digital at the Welsh Ambulance Service, shared details of current digital plans and priorities, pointing to ambitions to build a digitally enabled urgent and emergency care system capable of improving patient access, supporting clinical decision-making, and helping to deliver more sustainable services across Wales. A major priority is also strengthening the NHS 111 Wales digital front door and evolving it into a broader urgent care hub model with digital-first access, AI-enabled virtual assistants, symptom checking, improved NHS Wales App integration, and better routing to the right service, first time. “A big part of our digital ambition is supporting care closer to home, helping people access trusted advice, navigation, and support earlier, before issues escalate into avoidable emergency demand,” Jonny stated.
The service is also continuing to make investments in remote integrated care and virtual clinical assessment across 111 and 999 services, as well as in data and insight platforms to support near real-time operational decision-making, and frontline productivity improvements through automation, cloud services, and modern mobile tech. Other priority areas include cyber resilience, digital reliability, information governance, and the safe and governed adoption of AI across workflows. More broadly, according to Jonny, the ambition is to move “from a reactive ambulance service model towards a more intelligence-led, digitally connected urgent care system”.
Jonny highlighted the development of the trust’s NHS 111 Wales digital front end as one of the most significant projects from the last year, including the introduction of AI-enabled virtual assistant capabilities and digital symptom checking. “The platform is currently supporting around 5,000–6,000 patient interactions per month and is helping provide patients with access to care in ways that better meet them where they are, whether that’s digitally, remotely, or through more traditional channels when needed,” he said. “It’s about creating a reusable digital platform for urgent care that allows us to scale future digital and AI-enabled services much more rapidly and at significantly lower cost.”
On the approach, Jonny shared: “We deliberately started small, safely, and with strong governance from day one. The AI is designed to guide people to trusted information and appropriate services, not replace clinical decision-making. Human escalation routes remain clear throughout. What we’ve learned is that people are willing to use AI in urgent care when it is transparent, safe, and genuinely helpful. The focus has never been about forcing digital adoption or replacing human interaction, it’s about providing choice, improving confidence, and protecting clinical capacity where it matters most.” An AI steering group has been established, and the focus is on identifying practical use cases.
Focuses for the next 12 months cover the further development of remote clinical assessment and digitally enabled care pathways, moving toward predictive operational insight using data and analytics, increasing automation and digital workflow efficiency, and continuing to strengthen cyber resilience and digital reliability. AI will be scaled safely into operational use cases where there is clear patient or workforce benefit; AVT will be explored within the ePCR environment to help reduce admin burden and improve documentation quality; and work will carry on with regulators and partners to help open the pathway for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations, supporting future delivery of critical equipment such as AEDs and other urgent medical supplies, particularly in rural or hard-to-reach areas.
“Looking ahead, we are also exploring how our virtual agent capability could integrate into enhanced symptom checker environments in the future,” Jonny noted. “This has the potential to move Albot’s capability into a completely new level of intelligent patient navigation and personalised digital support. However, this would require very careful planning, phased testing, clinical assurance, governance, and wider regulatory considerations before any broader deployment.”
