4. Will the Cabinet Secretary commit to a review of the governance structures of the NHS Wales Informatics Service? (OAQ51096)

I’m expecting a Wales Audit Office report on the wider information management and technology system in NHS Wales. I expect that to be completed within the next three to four months, and governance arrangements will form part of that Wales Audit Office review and I will, of course, expect that to include the NHS Wales Informatics Service. I will then consider the recommendations of that review once they’ve been completed.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. That audit office report follows a number of criticisms by the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee into the performance of NWIS. This is an organisation with a budget of over £53 million and 500 staff, but there’s no transparent way to be able to monitor their performance or hold them to account. They have no independent board and publish no annual reports, so I would urge the Cabinet Secretary, when considering that report, to think with a reformist mindset of how we can bring some greater rigour to the system.

Thank you for urging me to take a reformist mindset. I recognise the points that are raised, because they’re hosted by Velindre and the hosting arrangements are such because I think there would be a challenge trying to set them up as a wholly separate NHS body, but I am interested in not just a debate, but an answer to how we provide greater awareness of what they do and greater governance oversight of what they do, whether that’s within Velindre or not. So, I’m taking a completely open mind about what the Wales Audit Office would have to say, because I do think it’s something that we would need to resolve moving forward to make sure there’s greater awareness and scrutiny, which I think is quite right and proper.

Cabinet Secretary, the recent parliamentary review of health and social care in Wales noted that the majority of the NHS Informatics Service’s 534 staff are currently involved in maintaining digital services and infrastructure rather than developing new systems. Now, given the widespread concerns—and we’ve discussed it here—about open data, collecting data and information sharing, for example with patient notes between the health and social care sectors and, in fact, between hospitals within even the same health board, what commitment can you give that you will look to review to ensure a more proactive and innovative output from this service?

Well, that’s more about the capacity of NWIS to actually undertake a joint mission, a different mission, of both developing new products and at the same time maintaining the significant architecture that we have. And we saw in the recent cyber attacks the ability of NWIS as a national body to co-ordinate action to maintain our whole system. That was a significant undertaking. I’ve said before in this Chamber, actually, that I do recognise the challenge in the real capacity for NWIS to continue to develop new products, to actually meet the public expectation about how they live their lives in the here and now, the expectation to be able to move data and information to share that in a way that actually matters to them. That’s why NWIS have actually helped us, for example, in creating the community pharmacy system, so that we’re now able to have a shared version of the GP record. There’s lots of health gain to be made in having the safe and effective transfer and sharing of records. I, again, have an open mind about whether we need to actually try and bring more people into NWIS to improve and increase their capacity or whether, actually, we need a different relationship with other people who develop products themselves. There’s a challenge there about intellectual property. There’s also a challenge about the ability for the public purse at a time of increasing austerity to be able to do that. This is the only part of the public service where there’s a continual expectation that we can spend more money and employ more staff. We have to be able to measure our expectations against the priorities we have in the whole service, but NWIS and information technology are absolutely a part of our architecture moving forward and are a significant part of the health gains still to be made. So, this is a priority issue for me, moving forward.