The new Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care's opening statement to the Senedd last week was, in many respects, a frank admission of where things stand. Long waits, fragmented care, a workforce under pressure, and a health system the minister described as "analogue in a digital age." For anyone who has worked closely within the Welsh health system over the past few years, little of that diagnosis will come as a surprise.
A clearer sense of direction
What is encouraging is the clarity of direction. The renewed commitment to a "once for Wales" approach to digital, data and AI, underpinned by a new 10-year strategy, signals something more considered than a short-term IT uplift. It points toward the kind of nationally-coordinated, integrated infrastructure that the health system has needed for a long time, and that many parts of it have been working toward for many years.
Ambition without foundations will stall
At Marvell Consulting, we have seen these challenges at close quarters. Working with NHS Wales, NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care, we know that digital ambition can sometimes run ahead of the foundational conditions that make it possible: shared data standards, interoperable systems, and services designed around how people actually move through care rather than how organisations are structured. Without the connective tissue that allows services and healthcare provision to join up, the most ambitious digital strategy will stall at the point of delivery.
The benefits of setting these kinds of foundations have already been illustrated, supporting an uplift of adoption of digital social care records in registered care providers in England, from 47% to over 80%. This means more patient experiences can be more joined up across more care settings.
The "Once for Wales" framing is only meaningful if it is built on those foundations.
The data challenge hiding in plain sight
The speech also contains something that is easy to overlook amid the waiting list headlines. The shift toward community-based care, integrated services, and whole-system governance is not just a structural reform. It is a significant data and information challenge.
When care moves closer to home, the need for joined-up information across health boards, local authorities, and third-sector providers becomes acute. That is where digital strategy and service reform have to move in step, and where the real test of the 10-year vision will lie.
The opportunity is real
The ambition is right. The scale of the task is significant. But with political will, a clear national strategy, and delivery grounded in genuine user need, there is a real opportunity here to build something Wales can be proud of, and that the rest of the UK can learn from.
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If you’d like to chat about how you can lay these foundations within your organisation, get in touch at hello@marvell-consulting.com. We’d be happy to share our thoughts and experiences.
Read more about how we've previously supported digital healthcare in adopting data standards and making medical device data more widely accessible in our case studies.
Whether you’re ready to start your project now or you just want to talk things through, we’d love to hear from you.
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