7. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: How Digital Technology is Improving Primary Care

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:29 pm on 6 February 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 6:29, 6 February 2018

Cabinet Secretary, I've seen the future, and it works. Last night, I had my first online GP consultation. I downloaded an app. I subscribed for a service at £5 a month. I was able to get an appointment within an hour. I sent the GP my notes and some pictures. I had a very good consultation, and within minutes a prescription had been e-mailed to a chemist of my choice.

The pace of change outside the NHS is extraordinary, and as a Labour and Co-operative Assembly Member, I don't want to be using the private sector. But given the frustrations people have in accessing a GP, and given the ponderous pace of digital change within the NHS, there are revolutionary changes happening around us, and the NHS simply isn't keeping pace. The debate this afternoon has primarily been about back-of-office functions, record access, not about patient care, not about diagnostics, not about the potential in digital and artificial intelligence that revolutionised the way that people access healthcare services. And I really worry that the approach we have, the approach to procurement in particular—the rather bureaucratic, longwinded culture we have in the NHS in Wales, in particular—is really holding us back. The Public Accounts Committee has been hearing of the 10 years it's going to take for an IT system on hospital catering to appear after it was first recommended; seven years is a typical time lag. Given what we know of the changes in digital and AI, seven years is more than a lifetime. It simply isn't good enough.

So, I could ask you, Cabinet Secretary, you've had now very critical reports from the Wales Audit Office on the NHS Wales Informatics Service, and bear in mind Wales Audit Office reports are agreed reports, they're negotiated reports with the host bodies, they generally are fairly calm in their criticism—this report was very firm and damning. We've also had the parliamentary review, which gives chapter and verse on how change needs to happen, and I simply fear that our cultural approach up to now is no longer fit for purpose and we need some radical change rather than continuing in the rather ponderous way we have to date.