4. Will the Minister outline how the Welsh Government is supporting digital innovation within health and care services? OAQ54576

Yes, thank you. Digital innovation is a key driver of change. 'A Healthier Wales' sets out our commitment to support the use of digital technologies to improve health and care services in Wales. This includes significant additional investment in digital priorities and builds on existing support for technology innovation and adoption.

Thank you, Minister. I was pleased to read your written statement from 30 September on digital health and care and showing that progress is being made, and it's certainly something that I see as making a real difference on the front line in visits that I have carried out to various projects within my constituency. I've previously raised issues around how digital health and care can support my constituents through things like electronic referrals, but also exciting examples that I've seen such as the neighbourhood nursing model, using the Malinko software, which is being piloted in the north Cynon cluster. I note in your written statement your comments around ensuring that stakeholders are fully signed up to this agenda, and it seems to me that we have a plethora of good practice in certain areas in Wales. So, I'd be interested to learn more about how you intend to ensure that this good practice can be spread, and that all stakeholders can be signed up to this really important agenda.

Some of it is looking at how we are reforming our digital architecture in Wales, the successor role to NHS Wales Informatics Service, as part of a special health authority, but more broadly, again, about the culture, and the role that we think that the chief digital officer for health and care can play to both advise the Government on future strategy, but also to lead the digital health and care profession in Wales and to be a champion for the future of digital health and care here in Wales. It also goes into one of the recommendations from the Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into community and district nursing—the one we accepted about making sure there's proper investment to enable people to have hand-held devices with appropriate technology to enable them to do their job more effectively. So, this is not necessarily about innovation that is entirely new and different; it's actually about how we help them to be even more effective in their job with the way that we go about living our everyday lives and using hand-held devices. You can expect to see more of that and to see it more consistently adopted through our system. The challenge will be not to choke off innovation, but to be able to make choices in—[Inaudible]—to make sure we really do have adaptability between each of the different parts of our health and care system.

Minister, I do actually acknowledge the work that you have undertaken to digitalise some patient records through the Welsh community care information system. However, serious problems do remain. During a recent meeting of elected Members in north Wales with the health board, there was unanimous support for the need to take action to address the fact that hospitals are simply not able to communicate with each other. For instance, if I was to go into Ysbyty Gwynedd with an issue, and perhaps I'd been in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd a couple of weeks ago, the notes in Bangor wouldn't pick up on the fact. In other words, the hospitals don't talk to one another. The health board chief exec and the chairman of the board have said it's a real problem when wanting to deliver safe and practical healthcare.

But in addition to hospitals struggling, I know that care homes are struggling to access patient information too, and nursing homes. That just sounds in this day and age really bizarre, and this could actually be negatively affecting over 15,000 people aged 65 or over who actually are residing in care homes. So, what consideration have you given to ensuring that our care homes and nursing homes are able to tap into the health systems on their patients, and also that they have relevant access to digital patient records and that, most importantly, we do have clear digitalised information that is able to translate across all our hospitals.

There are two quite different things that the Member said there. One is about making sure that parts of our healthcare system can talk to each other—in particular, in the hospital-based part of the system. That certainly is work that is ongoing with further investment and expectations being made, and I've actually seen examples of innovation in exactly this space on my recent visit to north Wales.

The second point you made I think is rather more confusing and, actually, to make sure that we get a proper answer, it might be helpful to be really clear about what the Member's asking for. So, I'd ask you to follow up in writing, because access to care homes, and who in a care home has access to that—well, you need to understand who that actually is. Are you talking about registered healthcare professionals providing direct care or healthcare, or are you talking about the management level? It's really important to understand who has ownership of that data, if it's the person, and how that data is shared, and our systems to allow that to be undertaken, with proper information governance around that. It might be helpful if the Member wrote to me on the particular issue that she sees, and then I'll get her a proper answer to deal with that.