Building a People-First Digital Future for Health and Care

The NHS 10-year plan sets a positive, defining and ambitious course, a more digital, preventive, and person-centred service starting and staying at home. Fulfilling that promise means closing system gaps, supporting our workforce, and ensuring technology lightens the load instead of widening divides. The choices we make in the next ten years will shape not only the future of health and social care, but also the kind of society we want to be and live as citizens.

As a co-chair of the HETT Steering Committee, a clinician and CXIO within an integrated care board, I have witnessed first-hand how HETT’s targeted, insightful, and carefully curated sessions make it one of the most valuable and anticipated events in the health and care calendar. Bringing together the most respected, credible voices in the industry, creating a space for honest, critical conversations that challenge assumptions and inspire.

Attending isn’t just a networking opportunity it’s a chance to gain insights that are worth their weight in gold, shaping strategies and decisions that will define the next era of healthcare.

Let’s be clear

The future will not be built on technology alone, but also on how we choose to use it. This means listening to, designing with people, patients, and not just for them. It means ensuring diverse voices of young people, of marginalised communities, of carers and families are not only heard but shape decisions at every level.

Learning Lessons, Collaboration and Healthy Partnerships

Globally, we must also have the humility to learn from other countries that can show us what bold, long-term investment in digital-first systems can achieve so we can adapt these lessons to our unique context, but also build open, trusted platforms where healthcare suppliers, entrepreneurs, and start-ups can collaborate and scale innovations. Creating continuous spaces for investment and partnership is not an optional extra; it is the engine of sustainable transformation.

Digital Health That Puts People First

Workforce and wellbeing must remain central. Digital innovation is not about replacing people but enabling them. whether through AI reducing administrative burden, digital wards, remote workforces, or data-driven planning, predictive analytics, the goal is always to give clinicians more time to care, and staff across the system more space to think, innovate, and grow.

We must create new pathways, especially for young people planning their careers in the NHS, health and social care setting, to lead in areas like data science, digital user design, digital safety and health tech innovation. Leadership, too, must evolve visibly driven by the principle that diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes. By investing wisely, putting people first, and ensuring every voice is heard, we can make the NHS health and social care a model of sustainability.

Towards An Equitable, Future-Ready Health and Care

If we want healthcare to truly deliver for everyone, we need to invest not just in technology, but also in people. It’s about creating an ecosystem where human skills, digital tools, and smart policies work together. The future we want depends on collaboration across sectors, bringing innovators, leaders, policymakers, regulators, citizens, digital technology partners and providers together to build solutions that are equitable, futureproof, and fair.

I look forward to seeing you at HETT Show 2025 on the 7 & 8 October 2025

The future belongs to all of us. Let us be bold enough to build it together