7. What are the Welsh Government's priorities for improving digital systems within the Welsh NHS? OQ56716

Our priority is to build on the impressive digital response to the COVID pandemic, and to lock in new ways of working that enabled us to use digital platforms to support our outstanding contact tracing and vaccine delivery services in Wales.

Thank you, Minister, for that answer. I'm sure that you know that, for many years now, IT workarounds have been devised by practitioners within the NHS, such as a bespoke app that two GPs in my constituency are developing with a local company. This particular app will enable patients to access their records, better medicate their own conditions and order repeat prescriptions, whilst also empowering the GPs to push out public health information. How are you, Minister, ensuring, though, that the NHS Wales Informatics Service has oversight of these kind of workarounds and is able to extrapolate best practice and then embed this into their 'once for Wales' approach?

Thanks very much, Vikki, and I know that some GPs have been incredibly innovative in the way that they've responded to the pandemic, and knowing that it's difficult to meet people face to face under some conditions, and therefore they have been really inventive, and it's great to hear that is happening in your constituency. I'm certainly very happy to pass on—if you could pass on that information to me, I'll make sure that that gets to Digital Health and Care Wales, who, of course, have now taken over from NWIS, and I know they work hard to identify new and emerging technologies that have the potential to improve health and care services. So, I'm very happy to look at that, and I'll be meeting with the head of Digital Health and Care Wales next week.