3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: National Immunisation Framework for Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:09 pm on 25 October 2022.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 3:09, 25 October 2022

Thank you very much, Russell. We have, throughout the pandemic, been following the advice of the JCVI, which, as you know, is embedded in science and a clinically led approach, and we will continue to do that. Obviously, if there are times when we need to work at pace, they have also demonstrated, during the pandemic, that they can also work at pace. I think we'd have to have quite a good reason to go away from JCVI advice, so that's certainly the model that we've followed so far. 

When it comes to digitally enabled vaccination, we will develop a person-centred digital vaccination journey, and that will include an integrated vaccination record, digital consent and improved booking and communication and recording functionality. So, as you've noted, Digital Health and Care Wales are going to review all vaccination systems. At the moment, they don't speak to each other, so interoperability is absolutely key, and that's what they're working to do. So, while thinking about long-term digital solutions, we are going to need to have some shorter term fixes to make improvements with an immediate effect. There are existing digital improvement schemes that will link to things like our digital medicines transformation portfolio, the national data resource and the digital services for patients and public programme.

The NHS Wales app—. Okay, I'm going to tell you quietly, Russell. It is actually being tested at the moment; it has been tested. What we want to do is to make sure that it works and that the functionality works. It's got to have three very key issues that make it work well. One is that the technical bits need to work well. The second is that you need the patient to be able to use it, and so make sure that it's a very simple process that everybody can access. And the third is that you need, for example, GPs to be able to link in with it. So, that is being tested at the moment in a real live operation; 1,000 people are using that as we speak. So, things are progressing, but what I don't want to do is to launch something, as they did in England, that then all the GPs switch off because it's just too overwhelming. We're just trying to make sure that we're taking things and not launching it formally until we are absolutely sure that the thing is going to work.