5. Will the Cabinet Secretary outline the Welsh Government’s plans to improve the Welsh NHS IT infrastructure? OAQ(5)0184(HWS)

Thank you for the question. ‘Informed Health and Care’ is our strategy for implementing new ways of delivering care through exploiting IT to improve outcomes for people in Wales.

Based on ‘once for Wales’ principles, it is underpinned by major national solutions and architecture designed to enable safe and secure use of information.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. Information technology has the potential to transform how we deliver healthcare in the future. From telemedicine to interactive health apps, the benefits to patients are enormous. Unfortunately, our current infrastructure is not able to meet today’s demands. With doctors and nurses forced to use ageing IT, unable to instantly share diagnostics or access patients’ records, it is clear that we need a complete overhaul of our IT infrastructure. Cabinet Secretary, what can your Government do to ensure that we have an efficient and secure IT system that is suitable for today’s demands and future needs?

Well, that’s the clear goal of this Government in our ‘Informed Health and Care’ strategy. We’ve got a range of national systems that are now in place to allow a much easier transfer of information across the healthcare world, and Choose Pharmacy is a good example of that. It’s not just the creation of the architecture, but what it allows and enables people to do, both to put services in that make best use of a pharmacy’s expertise, as well as taking pressure off GPs. There is a much greater ability to see a version of the GP record in unscheduled care in a hospital now as well. That’s a recent delivery. So, there’s more that is happening. With each year, you’ll see more and more of this in Wales, and, again, the national systems are a really important strength for us. Rather than having seven or eight different systems trying to talk to each other across health board boundaries, we’re insisting on a genuinely national approach for Wales, and that is delivering real and tangible benefits. So, it’s also part of the roll-out of an information system between health and care as well. I’m trying to think of the particular acronyms—the Welsh community care information service that is being rolled out at present in Bridgend and Powys should develop a safe and secure transfer of information between health and social care professionals.

So, there are steps being taken, but I recognise this is an area where these two big blocks of the public sector have not, up to now, been able to keep pace with the demand and the reality of the changes in people’s lives, the way we live with smartphones and smart technology. The health service is still catching up. There’s a challenge to do that safely and securely, but there’s huge potential and huge gains to be made by people in doing so, but also for healthcare professionals in the way they work with each other and others in the social care field.

Wales has a largely good record in investing in NHS IT infrastructure. Now, the Welsh Government has outlined aims for a £180 million all-Wales digital services framework. Can I ask the Cabinet Secretary to outline his vision as to how the NHS IT infrastructure will be improved by the scheme, what safeguards he has in place to protect patient confidentiality, especially with regard to breaches in other parts of the UK, and what assessment has been made of the overall savings that the new framework will provide in terms of monetary value for clinicians?

I’m happy to write you with the detail of the points you’ve raised, rather than trying to reach into the depths of my memory to do so. What I will say is that the broad points you raise about the potential for improvement, about the safety and security of patient information and understanding the trade-off between that and the benefit that can be gained from the sharing of that information are significant features in every single development we undertake, because we actually recognise the risk to patients in not having a more seamless transfer of information between health and care professionals. And actually, most members of the public expect this information to be provided in that way already. The challenge, really, is how the service catches up in actually meeting that expectation and the clear desire from the public to do so.

There’s also something about cultural change as well, and an understanding that patient records are patient records, and not healthcare records that they hold about people. Actually, in the past—there’s something about how we shift that culture so citizens take more control over their own healthcare information and are able to make different choices as a result of it. So, there’s a big cultural challenge, both for members of the public to participate in their healthcare in a different way, but also for healthcare professionals to do so as well. But I’m happy to write to you on the three specific points that you mentioned in your question.