The Choose Pharmacy platform also supports the electronic transfer of hospital discharge information to ensure that relevant information about an individual’s medication is shared appropriately between primary and secondary care, and I expect us to do more on making the very best use of the Choose Pharmacy platform. This, combined with access to the patient’s summary record, ensures that community pharmacists can provide their service with the full knowledge of an individual’s medication regime, to ensure that that patient receives the correct medication and to help them to understand their medication regime—not simply using a pharmacy to dispense a volume of medication, but to actually improve the quality of the care and that ease of access.

And digital technology is also improving how we deliver community care. The Welsh community care information system that you may have heard referred to as WCCIS in visits around the country or locality has been live since April 2016. And that’s driving joint working between NHS Wales organisations and our local authorities. It’s an excellent example of that joint working. It supports the safe sharing of information between health and social care with a system that is helping to deliver improved care and support for people across Wales. This is being achieved by allowing health and care staff, including community nurses, mental health teams, social workers and therapists to use a single system, to have access to a shared electronic record of care for the patient. And, for the patient, that should ensure that the health and care system is more joined up. It will avoid them having to repeat information, and it will give them confidence that the professionals they meet will understand their treatment and care needs.

Nine local authorities in Wales are currently live with the Welsh community care information system, along with Powys Teaching Local Health Board. A number of our early implementer local authorities include front-line health professionals who work within locally integrated care teams To support this, the provision of mobile devices for community nurses across Wales is being funded through the integrated care fund.

While there is clear evidence of the growing use of digital technology to provide care locally, it is still not yet at the scale that I would expect. So, it’s important that people are able to find up-to-date, trusted information and advice and assistance on the right care at the right place, and at the right time, and a proposed online platform for health and well-being, and the development of the integrated directory of services for health, social services and the third sector, will enable individual citizens to easily find this information online in a single place. And that directory of services has already been developed and used to support the 111 service where it’s already been rolled out in Wales.

The use of point-of-care testing, where diagnostic testing is undertaken outside a laboratory, will increase, and that will mean that more testing will be carried out close to, or within, a patient’s home. We're funding two studies that include provision of specialist devices to 100 GP practices and recruitment of patients to undertake self-testing and management at home. 

I've already explained some of the benefits that digital technology is bringing to the GP referral process. In this next year, from April onwards, the Welsh Government aims to introduce a similar electronic referral system within both dentistry and optometry. Ultimately, this should enable more people to be treated and cared for locally. That should reduce demand in secondary care and provide a better experience for the person themselves.

But we shouldn’t underestimate the challenges that we face in achieving our digital vision for local healthcare. We need to ensure the workforce has the skills and capability to use digital technology successfully. The way in which local healthcare and support is delivered is changing, and communication with the public is critical to this. The NHS and social care across Wales already gather a wide range of data and information. The more digitally we work, the more essential it becomes to use that data to improve the public’s participation in, and experience of, health and care services. This is why, last October, I set out plans to develop a clear policy framework to support effective, efficient and safe sharing and use of health and care data. Alongside this, we need to have a national conversation with the public to ensure that they better understand the way we use and share data, and explain how we protect and use that data responsibly to enhance and improve their own experience of care and treatment.

Effective engagement, of course, with our health and care professionals is essential to this. We need to create an environment where they're given time to inform and champion future developments. Our plans to exploit the potential of digital technology to improve care with local health and care professionals routinely communicating with specialists to diagnose, treat and care for people at or close to home are wide-ranging and ambitious. But, as the parliamentary review recognised, we have more to do, and more gain to be made. Greater and better use of digital technology is an essential part of the future of our health and care system, and I look forward to reporting on further progress to be made.