Weaving between the various exhibition stands, we also got to witness some incredible innovations in software and technology; driving home the message that digital transformation is very much leading the way towards a better, more efficient future for health and social care.

Setting the Stage

Access HSC's Head of Marketing, Laura Thompson, chaired the System Efficiency & Workforce Transformation Theatre over the two days and opened the first session with a short and sweet introduction to the show. She then handed the session over to the speakers, who kicked things off with a compelling talk on digital literacy and the impact on the workforce.

Santosh Kumar, a Machine Learning Researcher from the Health Economics Unit, began by saying that some of the main challenges of the digital skills gap are insufficient encouragement for staff training and development within organisations, and the obscure jargon associated with AI and machine learning. He states that “we don’t need fancy words; we need to focus on making it as simple and easy to understand as possible.”

Hayley Grafton, CNIO of University of Leicester, backed this up by saying how it’s essential to challenge and address the stigma surrounding digital maturity. While it’s known that much of the health and social care workforce isn’t fully adapted to using digital tools and systems, lacking digital literacy doesn't automatically equate to being digitally 'illiterate'.

We managed to catch another one of Hayley’s talks on the Keynote Theatre later that day, where the panel discussed “Should Tech Decisions Be Made by Clinical Leaders?”

Hayley mentioned how they work on a “clinically led, operationally delivered, tech-enabled” approach to planning care, which ensures they stay aligned with their strategy of “starting with the problem, not the solution.” The panel collectively agreed that clinicians bring more than just their clinical background to the table; their expertise is valuable in designing technology.

The importance of digital literacy for future clinical leaders was also discussed and how coding and programming languages are now being taught in schools to prepare children for a tech-driven future. Mobile apps, websites, e-learning courses, and other digital technologies are also proving to be highly effective in enhancing knowledge, reasoning, and critical thinking skills that would be required for children to succeed in various medical fields.

“Power to the Patients” and User Autonomy

The importance of person-centred care and data usage were topics highlighted on the Technology Enabled Care & Patient Engagement Theatre that afternoon. One of the talks we found the most interesting focused on how user-centric digital solutions must be prioritised in order for the NHS to keep pace with modern digital expectations.

Hosted by Samit Biswas, Dr. Gabriel Jones, Dr. Ed Volcek, Nina Janda, and Jonathan Boakes, they discussed how patients are becoming increasingly accustomed to using technology in their everyday lives, and as a result, it's crucial that they have control over their own data.

While the NHS digital transformation initiative is designed to support this shift from "human-to-human" to "human-to-tech" interactions, matching the fast-paced nature of the tech world with the risk-averse nature of healthcare is likely to be an ongoing challenge, with data models, digital processes, and solutions needing regular evaluation.  

Dark Data and the Ethical Use of AI

Dark data was another intriguing subject mentioned throughout the event. This is unused and unstructured data that’s acquired through interactions between company systems and devices, capable of providing valuable patient insights, predictive indicators, and assisting in critical decision making. However, data breaches, weak cybersecurity, and ethical governance pose significant challenges to organisations that tap into it as a regular resource.

Experts Dr. Anushka Patchava, Kassim Hussein, Dr. Cos Fantis, Dr. Farzana Rahman, and Ian Gargan, emphasised that while dark data holds crucial insights and has the potential to bring many benefits such as costs savings, improvements to supply chain management, and the chance to hyper-personalise patient care plans, accessing it and utilising it requires solving data fluidity issues, rigorous data management, and leveraging the power of AI to mine it effectively.

The role of AI in healthcare also prompts other ethical considerations. During James Somauroo’s thought-provoking talk on AI in Healthcare: A Dystopian Quest for Perfection? He begged the pressing question of “If AI can do everything, should it?” He believes that while AI should indeed take on admin tasks, diagnostics, and certain elements of physician-patient communication, empathy, a crucial aspect of patient care, should remain within the human domain.  

"Without true, biological empathy there's a risk of manipulation and unethical behaviours because unlike with humans, we don't know the motivation of AI,” said Somauroo.

He also raised the question of whether AI should be placed in the position of highly sensitive care roles, such as tackling loneliness in the elderly and delivering ChatGPT-style talking therapies for the mentally unwell –  both of which have the potential to dangerously undermine human interaction.

"If we are ok with AI giving us fake cognitive empathy at the point of human suffering, that is a serious decision we have made as a community, and one that erodes the fabric of what healthcare actually is.”

Process Mining and Redefining Patient Pathways

Process mining is a fascinating method of analysing clinical processes such as treatment, diagnosis, and disease prevention using data. It’s something we were introduced to in a very intelligible talk by Orthopedic Surgeon, Jacob Koris, at Digital Health Rewired in March, so we were keen to learn more about it and how it’s been helping Trusts and organisations elsewhere.

Chistopher Clark and Daniel Hayes of University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire, highlighted how many of the major challenges in healthcare, such as high rates of appointment cancellations, and increased DNA (Did not attend) rates, exist because of multiple patient pathways. To alleviate these issues, they collaborated with IBM to develop intelligent workflows and used process mining to determine where in the patient journey these issues were occurring the most.

This research led to the establishment of a centralised booking system and the implementation of a generative AI tool, which in play together, resulted in a DNA rate reduction of 6%, a 91% accuracy rate in classifying patient waiting lists, a reduced carbon footprint, and the capacity to see 700 more patients per week.  

“User design is not about making it pretty, but about making it work,” said IBM’s Design and Innovation Director, Lucy Marsden.

“Showing impact of change helps to build a business case, while keeping patient/staff experience at the centre of everything you do will help to illustrate value.”

Improving Health Outcomes Through Integration

David Pike from North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT) and Access’ own Head of Interoperability, Jardine Barrington-Cook co-hosted a brilliant session on how integration can be used to enable virtual wards and improve patient outcomes.

David gave us a great visual run-through of NEFLT’s virtual wards program, a program powered by Access’ systems, that directly integrate with the Trust’s own interface. He also talked about how since implementing the program, the Trust has witnessed improved collaboration between the acute and community services, enhanced patient flow and lower admissions, and they’ve been able to allocate resources more effectively.

Jardine followed on from David’s presentation to highlight the impact that having the right tools presenting data in the right context has on decision making and our ability to identify gaps. “It’s this joining of systems, recognising deficiencies, and the simplifying of workloads that help to make care as frictionless as possible.”

What Might Digital Healthcare 2025 Bring?

This year’s Digital Healthcare Show gave us an incredible two days of networking, engaging debates, and some game-changing insights into how the industry has been shaping up this past year. Looking to next year’s event, we anticipate that digital transformation will continue to dominate the agenda as healthcare technology advances and our existing solutions evolve.

Organisations and healthcare providers will continue to strive for better outcomes, which means we’re also likely to see a greater emphasis on data sharing, interoperability, governance, and embedding integration into healthcare models to enhance patient care and streamline how it’s delivered.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to work hard to do our part, and we look forward to what next year will bring.