DIGITAL HEALTH AND CARE WALES
to innovate on the single national platform in Wales . “ We need to use standards and open architecture to enable that innovation – which will come from our local health and care delivery organisations , from universities , from industry , as well as from our own teams in Digital Health Care Wales .
“ It goes back to the headline mission that we have : to create an enabling platform for digital transformation by giving it a good , solid infrastructure and foundation .”
Later this year there will be a new NHS Wales App , similar to the existing NHS App in
England . DHCW has worked closely with NHS Digital to build on its existing product and tailor it to Wales . Evans was the Welsh lead for the jointly developed NHS COVID-19 App across England and Wales , which had localisation and multilingual functionality built in from the beginning . He knew there would need to be a different approach for the NHS Wales App .
“ The NHS App was built for England and in English only , but we worked with NHS Digital to take the existing code and adapt it to our needs in Wales . This will include a language layer so we can present in Welsh or English , and other changes to connect directly to our digital systems in Wales , many of which already give us national coverage .”
“ The new app is exciting . People ' s engagement with digital in health and care has completely changed over the last two years , because of things like online test booking , at-home LFT diagnostics , and the NHS COVID-19 App . Over a million people in Wales have registered for a digital Covid Pass and that is a huge boost to digital adoption , which we need to build on .”
Evans knows they need to keep up with that and that there ' s still a huge recovery task in front of NHS Wales . He is determined that DHCW will help to drive transformation in health and care , but very much aware of the challenges in terms of competing priorities for investment , and the difficulty in recruiting and retaining talent .
Digital Health and Care Wales may be a young organisation , but it has a clear strategic vision and it ’ s growing fast .
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