In Conversation with the CTO of NHS England, Sonia Patel

At HETT Show 2025, Sonia Patel, Chief Technology Officer at NHS England, joined Avi Mehra for a wide-ranging discussion on how digital, data, and workforce transformation will drive delivery of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan. Her message was clear: success will depend on shared standards, partnership working, and creating a digitally confident workforce ready to embrace innovation. 

Building the Digital Blueprint for the Future NHS 

Patel opened by outlining work on the Model Digital Blueprint and the “Let’s Talk Architecture” initiative, frameworks designed to guide the shift from analogue to digital. 

She described this shift as a pivotal moment for digital professionals: 

“Digital is now a mainstay shift in the 10-year plan. It’s not a separate document, it’s integral.” 

The blueprint, she explained, will bring clarity to how digital investments align from national to local levels, defining roles, standards, and accountability across the system. It aims to provide a consistent foundation that balances national consistency with local flexibility, ensuring systems can innovate without fragmenting. 

Three Major Shifts: Person-Centred, Connected, and Unified 

Patel set out three key shifts that will shape the NHS’ digital journey: 

1. A move to person-centred architecture – redesigning systems around people and pathways, not organisations. This means putting individuals and their data at the heart of design, simplifying fragmented systems, and enabling seamless access to information for both professionals and citizens.
2. Investing in digital public infrastructure – creating the shared platforms, standards, and services that underpin the health system. Patel called it “the roads and rail of digital health,” highlighting lessons from countries like Estonia, India, and Brazil in building secure, interoperable digital foundations.
3. A unified operating model – one that ensures clear roles from national to local level, supports coordinated talent pipelines, and strengthens communities of practice to accelerate adoption.

“We’ve made great strides in digitisation through EPRs, work on data platforms and the NHS App, but it’s been held up by fragmented approaches.” 

The Power of Partnership 

Patel was emphatic that the NHS cannot deliver the 10-Year Plan alone. 

“We will not deliver the 10-Year Plan without industry.” 

She called for a shift from transactional relationships with suppliers to transformational partnerships based on shared outcomes. The co-creation of the digital blueprint with industry, through organisations such as TechUK, will be central to that goal. 

“We need to move away from where industry has been a transactional relationship to buy technology to one that becomes more a partnership around delivering outcomes.” 

She acknowledged that both sides have work to do: NHS buyers must grow in maturity, and suppliers must align to open, global standards that simplify the market and support true interoperability. 

Enabling Innovation and Market Growth 

Patel spoke about the importance of shaping the market to allow both large providers and SMEs to thrive. Drawing on international examples, she pointed to India’s digital public infrastructure as a model for encouraging innovation at scale while creating clear zones of responsibility for enterprise vendors and smaller innovators. 

She also discussed the need for clear demand signalling, setting out national priorities so that startups and SMEs can focus their efforts where they’re most needed. 

“We need to assist nationally and say, here are the key user cases we want SME providers to help us with.” 

At the same time, Patel stressed the importance of a “more permissive environment” for innovation, especially around AI. 

“We need to raise our risk appetite. We’re on the frontier of new innovation, we won’t get everything right, but we must move forward together.” 

Growing and Equipping the Digital Workforce 

With more than 44,000 digital professionals working across the NHS, Patel confirmed work is underway on a 10 year digital workforce plan. She spoke about expanding capacity, developing hybrid roles, and ensuring digital skills become embedded across every profession. 

“We need to ensure that we are supporting our workforce in the most meaningful way with these advancements of technology, so that it doesn’t just become a new piece of technology, but it helps bring joy back to work.” 

She noted that digital roles will increasingly appear in HR, finance, and clinical settings, alongside continued investment in clinical informatics and AI literacy.

Overcoming Barriers to Change 

When asked about the biggest challenge facing digital leaders, Patel’s answer was immediate: time and capacity. 

She urged teams to embed digital into existing improvement processes rather than treat it as a separate agenda, and to invest not only in implementing technology but in nurturing and optimising it over time. 

Partnership and Clarity at the Core 

Returning to the theme of collaboration, Patel said the blueprint must serve as the anchor for alignment across the NHS and its partners. 

“We can’t deliver this from the NHS. We need industry, professional associations. We need you all to work with us in partnership.  

She emphasised that one of the blueprint’s greatest strengths will be providing “clear signalling from the centre” giving local systems and suppliers confidence about where and how to engage. 

Finally, she called for consolidation and adoption of international and open standards, along with greater accountability for suppliers to adhere to them. 

“We’ve now got a superpower. We need to supercharge it.” 

A Vision for a Connected, Confident NHS 

Patel closed with a call for shared ownership of the digital future: 

“My closing thought today is, as we build a future together, let’s remember blueprints aren’t just lines on paper, they’re the foundation for real change.” 

Her message was one of urgency and optimism: focus on standards, collaboration, and people and the technology will follow. 

Join us at our upcoming event, HETT Leaders Summit on 12th February at Royal Armouries, Leeds. Register for free below.