December 2023 Newsletter

As 2023 draws to a close, we would like to thank our staff, NHS Wales colleagues, partners and the public for their support during the past year.

Wishing everyone a wonderful festive period and a happy new year! 

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other occasion, we hope that you will find some time to reflect on the positive aspects of this year and we look forward to seeing you all in 2024! 

Watch our seasonal message from Chief Executive, Helen Thomas.

Merry Christmas, Nadolig Llawen! 

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EIGHT COMMUNITY PHARMACY SYSTEM SUPPLIERS AWARDED GRANTS FOR ELECTRONIC PRESCRIPTIONS

Eight community pharmacy system suppliers have been awarded grants to make the innovations needed to deliver an electronic prescription service in Wales that will help patients, GPs and pharmacies.

Positive Solutions, Apotec and Cegedim Healthcare Solutions are the latest companies to have received support from the Community Pharmacy System Innovation Fund (CPSIF) which was set up by the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio (DMTP) in partnership with Life Sciences Hub Wales (LSHW).

They join Pharmacy X, Titan PMR (Invatech), Egton Medical (EMIS), Camascope and Clanwilliam who were awarded grants in the first two rounds of funding applications.

The grants will help suppliers to develop their systems to use an electronic prescription service (EPS) and receive prescriptions digitally instead of on paper. It will also support the suppliers to introduce innovative changes to their systems that will result in paperless dispensing and integration with the new NHS Wales app when it is launched.

Read more on the DHCW website

HOW AI CAN REVOLUTIONISE HEALTHCARE SHARED AT BIG DATA EVENT

Exciting opportunities for how artificial intelligence (AI) can transform health and social care in Wales were shared at a Big Data webinar.

Leaders and data professionals from health and care organisations across Wales attended the event, which was delivered by the Advanced Analytics team, an initiative of the National Data Resource Programme at DHCW, in collaboration with Life Sciences Hub Wales.

As well as sharing examples of where AI, machine learning or other innovations have helped solve a problem for healthcare professionals or patients, the challenges and barriers of larger scale adoption of AI were addressed, with a look ahead to opportunities for the future to enable greater use of AI and analytics.

Welsh Government’s Chief Digital and Innovation Officer of NHS Wales, Mike Emery and Gareth Ashman, Artificial Intelligence Policy Lead, discussed the digital and data strategy for health and social care in Wales and set out the priorities over the next 12 months.  

Read more on the DHCW website