The programme will be updated right up until the event so please keep checking back on this page to see the latest sessions. By clicking on the session title, you will see further information including any agreed speakers:

 

Day One: Thursday 6th February
08:30Registration & Refreshments
08:55Chair’s Opening Remarks: Alastair McLellan, Editor, HSJ
09:00

Opening panel discussion:

From vision to value: What the NHS 10-Year Plan demands of digital leaders now

In partnership with McKinsey

Six months into the NHS 10-Year Digital Plan, this panel explores early progress, emerging barriers, and the strategic role of digital in a rapidly evolving system. As funding shifts and organisational structures change, how can leaders ensure digital drives lasting transformation?

  • Mapping progress on digital maturity and identifying where capabilities are driving tangible improvements in care, outcomes, and efficiency
  • Aligning digital investment with long-term strategic goals to ensure resilience, scalability, and system-wide value
  • Strengthening leadership alignment and governance to keep digital transformation on course through structural change
  • Embedding digital within clinical, operational, and cultural systems to ensure it becomes foundational rather than peripheral
  • Driving local implementation with clear, actionable models that connect national strategy to frontline delivery
09:40

Panel discussion:

The Three Shifts, delivered: Turning digital potential into system-wide impact across communities, prevention and frontline care 

In partnership with Graphnet

Despite widespread support for the NHS’s three strategic shifts, translating vision into action remains a challenge. This session explores how digital innovation can drive meaningful change across prevention, community care, and frontline delivery.

  • Move from insight to action: How digital tools and integrated data can enable the three core shifts of the NHS 10-Year Plan—out of hospital, digital-first, and upstream in prevention.
  • Population health as the engine: How integrated data and population health intelligence can drive the shift from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treatment to prevention.
  • From dashboards to delivery: Redesigning data platforms to directly support clinicians and patients, not just system leaders.
  • What’s blocking progress: Addressing the real-world policy and funding barriers stalling transformation—and what levers digital leaders can pull now.
10:20

Panel discussion: 

EPRs at a crossroads: Fixing the foundations to unlock safer, faster digital care 

In partnership with Altera Digital Health

With EPR deadlines looming and clinician burnout rising, this session explores how NHS leaders can move beyond flawed, drawn-out implementations. Learn how modular, rapid deployment models are enabling trusts to deliver safer, smarter systems at pace — while laying the groundwork for long-term digital maturity and integrated care.

  • Why poor EPR implementation remains a threat to both staff wellbeing and patient safety — and what must change now.
  • Lessons from rapid, modular rollouts: how some trusts are achieving safer go-lives in months, not years.
  • Exploring ICS-wide approaches to shared records: cultural, financial, and technical enablers for true integration.
  • What leadership, procurement, and digital maturity must look like in a post-mandate NHS.
11:00Morning Refreshments & Networking
11:30

Interactive Discussion Groups

Address pertinent challenges in two pre-selected focused discussion groups led by expert solution providers. With groups of 8-12 participants, ensure you sign up early to secure your place at your preferred two tables.

How do we prioritise selecting digital enabling tools/solutions that deliver cashable savings to the NHS?

In partnership with DXC Technology

The ethics engine: Trust, consent and public buy-in for a digital NHS (Title TBC)

In partnership with GS1 UK

Unlocking clinical productivity with smart digital roles
From shiny to strategic: Getting more value from the tools you already haveDesigning digital systems that don’t harm: Risk governance in the AI ageBeyond contracts: Building true partnerships with digital suppliers
Letting the frontline lead: How bottom-up innovation can scale across systemsInclusion by design: Embedding equity in every digital decisionFrom digital sprawl to streamlined strategy: Mapping our application estate for impact
12:30Networking Lunch 
1:30

Panel discussion:

From EPR to intelligent automation: Accelerating NHS digital optimisation

In partnership with DXC Technology

As NHS organisations move beyond EPR deployment, this session explores how automation and intelligent digital tooling can drive productivity, reduce pressure on staff, enhance patient outcomes, and deliver cashable benefits - without adding complexity.

  • Smarter interactions - Patient, clinician, and system efficiencies: Harness automation in patient engagement (e.g. outpatient referrals, scheduling, triage) and clinical support to free up time and deliver faster, more responsive services.
  • Building resilient digital infrastructure for tomorrow: Align investment with long-term NHS priorities by focusing on scalable, intelligent tools that support a preventative, proactive care model.
  • Unlocking capacity through automation: Explore how targeted automation across service desks, admin and diagnostics reduces human workload, improves speed, and minimises downtime.
  • Post-EPR optimisation - Doing more with what you’ve got: Leverage current systems by embedding smarter workflows, reducing friction, and increasing clinical and operational value.
2:10

Panel discussion:

Foundations for building a unified digital health system by 2035

In partnership with GS1 UK

  • Challenges and risks of delivering an NHS 10-Year Health Plan without data standards at the core
  • Overcoming digital disparities to successfully achieve a national single patient record
  • Driving stakeholder engagement to support traceability and interoperability, from hospital to community and beyond
  • Empowering frontline staff with accurate, trusted data to improve operational efficiency and patient safety using point of care scanning
2:50

Panel discussion:

Wiring the NHS for impact: Digital infrastructure that delivers

In partnership with Snowflake

As the NHS accelerates toward a data-driven future, digital infrastructure must evolve from fragmented legacy systems into a cohesive, strategic foundation. This session explores how national alignment, smarter investment, and modernised architecture can deliver tangible impact—from clinical insight and operational resilience to AI readiness and equitable digital access.

  • From fragmentation to federation: Establishing national digital architecture and governance frameworks that support secure, consistent, and scalable data use across the NHS.
  • Digital infrastructure as a strategic asset: Reframing infrastructure investment to enable clinical insight, operational efficiency, and system-wide readiness for AI and innovation.
  • Unlocking hidden value in NHS data: Building a fully integrated decision-support ecosystem by 2026 through the activation of underused datasets and the modernization of local digital capabilities.
  • Readiness, risk, and resilience: What is the NHS's collective responsibility for digital continuity, cyber maturity, and infrastructure equity across all care settings—and who’s accountable?
3:20Afternoon Refreshments & Networking 
4:00

Panel discussion:

Delivering value through digital: Rebuilding NHS productivity around people, data and leadership

In partnership with RLDatix

As the NHS confronts structural reform and financial constraint, this session explores how digital leaders can redefine productivity through smarter data use, cultural change and strategic investment. Aligned with the 10-Year Plan, it will highlight how to drive measurable impact—without burning out teams or wasting digital potential.

  • Move from inputs to outcomes: Redefine NHS productivity around value, access, and clinical benefit—not just financial targets or throughput metrics.
  • Harness real-time insight: Scale the use of digital platforms and predictive analytics to enable rapid, intelligent decision-making across care settings.
  • Lead through complexity: Explore how senior digital leaders can align transformation ambitions with financial constraint, workforce challenges, and structural change.
  • Power the System With Culture: Embed digital fluency, shared accountability, and cross-sector leadership to deliver impact from board to ward.
  • Unlock return on digital investment: Learn from real-world examples where technology delivered measurable service redesign, efficiency, or clinical outcomes.
4:40

Panel discussion:

AI in the NHS: From hype to high-value deployment

In partnership with Microsoft

How can NHS systems move beyond AI experimentation and deliver real clinical and operational value — at pace, with trust, and at scale?

  • Extracting value, not just pilots: What AI applications are proving most effective in real-world NHS settings — and how do we shift from one-off use cases to system-level gains?
  • Safe speed at scale: Balancing innovation with risk — how boards, ICSs, and trusts can adopt AI rapidly without compromising safety, governance, or public confidence.
  • From voice tech to predictive intelligence: Learnings from ambient and generative AI deployments — what’s working, what’s hype, and where next for decision-support AI.
  • Workforce and capability readiness: Addressing clinical concerns, digital literacy, and change fatigue — how to ensure people trust, understand, and shape AI adoption.
5:10Chair’s closing remarks: Alastair McLellan, Editor, HSJ 
5:15

Evening briefing:

In partnership with McKinsey

7:00

Networking Reception & Dinner 

Drinks reception from 19.00 with dinner served at 19.30. Finish around 21.30. 

Day Two: Friday 7th February
08:00Morning Briefing
08:50Chair’s Opening Remarks: Alastair McLellan, Editor, HSJ 
09:00

Panel discussion:

From hospital-centric to neighbourhood-enabled: Accelerating the digital left shift

Delivering care closer to home demands more than vision—it requires digital infrastructure, funding reform, and system-wide coordination. This session explores what’s needed to turn neighbourhood working into a scalable, digital reality.

  • Define the digital architecture required to make neighbourhood care a reality—interoperability, shared records, virtual hubs, and community-first tools.
  • Explore the funding and accountability shifts needed to reward prevention, enable cross-sector partnerships, and protect upstream investment.
  • Confront digital exclusion and variation —what will it take to achieve equitable, scalable access to digital care across all neighbourhoods?
  • Spotlight successful local models and what’s replicable: single points of access, virtual wards, multi-agency coordination, and digital-led triage.
9:40

Partner showcase:

Innovation in action: Solving the NHS's biggest digital challenge

With the stakes higher than ever for digital transformation in the NHS, this fast-paced innovation showcase tackles a to-be-confirmed system-level challenge facing senior NHS digital leaders — from driving true integration to workforce sustainability or digital equity.

Framed by the bold ambition of the 10-Year Health Plan, three leading technology partners each have just 10 minutes to demonstrate how their solutions directly address the challenge — not with theory or promise, but through proven impact, measurable outcomes, and strategic alignment to national goals.

 

Partner 1Partner 2Partner 3
10:20

Panel discussion:

Leading through the crunch: Reimagining the NHS digital workforce for resilience, capability and system impact

In the face of acute workforce pressure and shifting governance, this session explores how NHS digital leaders can build resilient, confident teams; redefine digital leadership; and sustain transformation amid national cuts and local complexity.

  • From surviving to thriving: How to retain, retrain, and reorganise digital teams amid national workforce reduction targets and budget pressures.
  • Beyond the CIO: Embedding digital ownership at board, CEO, and clinical leadership levels to drive culture and accountability.
  • Capability and confidence: Proven strategies to scale digital fluency, empower frontline professionals, and foster workforce-wide transformation.
  • System leadership in practice: What digital leadership looks like in the evolving ICS —navigating governance change, aligning risk appetite, and sharing capacity.
11:00Networking break and HSJ Awards Winners Posters
11:30

Panel discussion:

Empowering equity and trust: Realising the NHS App’s transformative role in belonging, prevention & participation

The 10-Year Health Plan envisions the NHS App as the digital front door to a more equitable, preventative, and personalised health system. This session will examine how senior digital leaders can move beyond basic functionality to harness the App as a strategic tool for system transformation—empowering citizens, reducing inequalities, and building trust in a data-driven future.

  • Tackle health inequalities by using App features co-designed with underserved communities to close access gaps and support prevention goals.
  • Drive system-wide efficiency by aligning the App with EPRs, self-referrals, and care planning—supporting truly digital neighbourhood care.
  • Strengthen public trust with clear data governance, opt-in controls, and transparency to reduce opt-outs and improve engagement.
  • Reduce avoidable admissions through App-enabled remote monitoring, personalised nudges, and proactive condition management.
  • Minimise digital exclusion risk by embedding inclusion strategies into workforce, culture, and public engagement plans.
12:10

Panel discussion:

Procurement with purpose: Smarter investment for a digital NHS

In the next decade, NHS procurement must stop funding fragmented tech that delivers little impact. This session speaks frankly to senior digital leaders: how do we align digital spend with the outcomes demanded by the 10 Year Health Plan - better care, faster access, and long-term value?

  • From spend to impact: Ensure digital tools are embedded, used, and generate clear clinical and operational ROI - not just procurement wins.
  • System-first investment: Use national levers and frameworks to cut duplication, boost vendor leverage, and scale what works across systems.
  • Commissioning for outcomes: Back solutions that enable prevention, personalised care, and digitally enabled neighbourhood services.
  • Procurement intelligence: Replace hype with evidence. Use phased validation, clinical leadership, and rigorous evaluation to filter what’s truly fit for the future.
12:50

Panel discussion:

The future is built-in: Delivering the NHS tech stack that works

The NHS has no shortage of pilots—but it lacks a system that reliably scales transformative technologies into everyday care. This session explores how digital leaders can embed AI, genomics, robotics, wearables and data into real-world delivery, drawing insights from both UK pioneers and global exemplars.

  • The NHS tech stack, redefined: What an AI-native, data-driven, virtual-first NHS really demands from infrastructure, governance, and leadership.
  • Five techs, one system: Turning isolated progress in AI, robotics, genomics, wearables, and real-time data into interoperable, scaled national capabilities.
  • The great translation gap: Why proven innovations stall at rollout—and what a functioning national accelerator model must include to break through.
  • ICS case files: How leading systems are embedding automation, ambient AI, genomic tools and remote monitoring into business-as-usual—without breaking trust or continuity.
  • Global signals, local strategy: Drawing lessons from international health systems advancing faster on digital maturity, interoperability, and tech-enabled care models.
1:30Chair’s Closing Remarks: Alastair McLellan, Editor, HSJ