WelshConfed26: Health and care in Wales: if not now, when?

08:00Registration opens & exhibition, networking, refreshments

08:00Breakfast sessions

• The state of mental health in Wales: what the evidence tells us

  This session is supported by Mind Cymru.

  Drawing on new findings from Mind Cymru's Big Mental Health Report, this session provides a unique picture of peoples' experience of mental health in Wales today. Explore what people, professionals and service data reveals about access to support, emerging challenges and future opportunities. 

  Attendees will gain actionable insights to inform planning, service improvement and delivery of Wales' mental health ambitions and how Mind Cymru can contribute to this.

  

• If not now, when? Turning Wales’s national architecture into action

  This session is supported by Aire Logic.

  Wales has a shared architectural vision for a connected, data-driven health and care system. The challenge is turning it into affordable progress across health boards, trusts and services.

  Aire Logic will explain how the National Target Architecture was developed with Digital Health and Care Wales, bringing all health boards and trusts behind a coherent 10-year direction, supported by Wales’s first enterprise architecture Community of Practice.

  The session will then consider how organisations can move towards the target architecture despite funding and operational pressures.

  Vicky and Matthew will explore how open, interoperable architecture, regional collaboration and incremental change can support progress without waiting for the perfect programme, budget or technology. Attendees will gain practical insights into aligning national strategy with local priorities and taking achievable steps towards joined-up care in Wales.

  

  • Lead Enterprise Architect, Airelogic

    Vicky Rothwell

  • Lead Architect and Principal Consultant, Airelogic

    Matthew Pattison

09:05Plenary

• 9.05 Conference Plenary opens - day 2

  • Broadcaster, Journalist and Live Event Host

    Rob Osborne

• 9.10 Keynote address

  • Cabinet Minister for Health and Care

    Mabon ap Gwnfor MS

• 9.35 Connected care, better outcomes: how AI and data are shaping the future of healthcare in Wales

  This session is supported by BT.

  With two decades of experience in the NHS, Professor Sultan Mahmud will talk about how AI, data and digital innovation can help clinicians make faster decisions, improve patient outcomes and create more time for care.

  He’ll discuss how connected technologies and trusted partnerships can turn ambition into action, delivering a more efficient, sustainable and patient-focused health service for Wales.

  

  • Director of Healthcare, BT Business

    Professor Sultan Mahmud

• 9.50 Community by design: beyond hospital by default - with Thea Stein

  Workforce, productivity, and international lessons for care closer to home.

  • Chief Executive, Nuffield Trust

    Thea Stein

10:30Exhibition, networking, refreshments

11:00Breakout sessions - final round

• When transformation is urgent, how do we decide what is genuinely worth investing in?

  This session is supported by CGI IT UK Ltd.

  CGI and Hywel Dda University Health Board will explore how health and care organisations can turn transformation ambition into measurable value. Drawing on real experience and emerging thinking around digital, data and AI, the session will examine how investment can release capacity, improve outcomes and build resilience.

  Delegates will be asked to apply practical frameworks to a live challenge, exploring where they would invest to create the greatest sustainable impact.

  

• NHS-industry partnerships in practice: delivering better outcomes for patients and the NHS

  This session is supported by ABPI.

  Partnerships between the NHS and the research-based pharmaceutical industry have a strong track record of delivering benefits for patients, the NHS and industry: the so-called ‘triple win’. 

  This session will explore how effective NHS–industry partnerships can support the delivery of NHS priorities, improve patient outcomes and help address growing pressures across the health system. It will also mark the launch of a new report quantifying the impact of these partnerships on health outcomes and economic productivity.

  

  • Director, Value and Access Policy, Amgen UK

    Richard Price

  • Acting Director of Research, Innovation and Value, Hywel Dda University Health Board / President, Academy for Healthcare Science

    Professor Chris Hopkins

  • CEO, Asthma and Lung UK

    Sarah Sleet

  • UK Head of Public Affairs, Novartis

    Rob Thomas

  • CEO, The Life Sciences Hub Wales

    Cari-Anne Quinn

• Carer Aware communities: equipping professionals and community services to better support unpaid carers

  This session is supported by Carers Wales & Carers Trust.

  Unpaid carers play a vital role in supporting health and care systems, yet many remain unidentified until they reach crisis point. Co-produced with carers, this session will explore how creating carer aware communities can support early identification, prevention and improved wellbeing. Attendees will be introduced to free online training resources and explore how equipping community organisations to recognise and respond to carers can strengthen links with health services, improve referrals and signposting, and ensure carers receive the right support at the right time.

  

  • Carer Aware Project Officer, Carers Trust Wales

    Sioned Williams

  • Programme Lead, Carers Trust Wales

    Kelly Harris

  • Training and Learning Officer, Carers Wales

    Heather Beer

  • Senior Policy and Public Affairs Officer, Carers Wales

    Jake Smith

• Why transformation in NHS Wales often struggles to deliver lasting change: what a new government can do differently

  This session is supported by Perago.

  "Transformation" gets used to describe almost anything: a new IT system, a service redesign, a five-year strategy. NHS Wales has tried most of them. Some have delivered. Most have not stuck. The reason is rarely ambition. It is that transformation gets treated as an event, not a discipline: a programme with a start and end date, rolled out before anyone has properly understood what the current service does, for whom, and why.

  Caerphilly County Borough Council offers a useful comparison. Facing rising demand and a shrinking budget, the council did not start with cuts. It spent two years on agile, user-centred service design, mapping how services actually worked before rebuilding governance around what that revealed. The result was over £20 million saved in the first two years, with a roadmap to save £65 million while improving services. Understanding before redesigning is exactly the discipline health and care in Wales has struggled to protect time and funding for.

  The UK Cabinet Office's Test, Learn and Grow programme, a three-year, £100 million commitment, backs that same discipline at national scale: testing place-based experiments locally before scaling them, rather than designing policy centrally and rolling it out cold. This session asks what a Welsh equivalent would need.

  

• Learning differently: how AI could transform education and learning across NHS Wales

  This session is supported by Health Education and Improvement Wales.

  How could AI make learning more personalised, accessible and responsive across NHS Wales, while maintaining the safety, quality and trust our workforce and patients expect? 

  This session brings together leaders from Health Education and Improvement Wales and Cardiff University School of Medicine to explore how that ambition is already being put into practice, through examples including the healthcare AI learning interface and Genomics AI mentor, speakers will demonstrate how AI enabled tools can provide on demand, role relevant guidance, build confidence in rapidly evolving areas and support consistent evidence-based learning. The panel will also explore how AI is being embedded within undergraduate medical education, helping future doctors develop the knowledge, critical thinking and professional judgement needed to work safely and responsibly alongside AI enabled systems.

  

12:05Open exchange sessions

• From hospitals to the community: What’s holding us back?

  Across Wales, there's consensus that health and care services need to respond to growing demand, increasing complexity and widening health inequalities by shifting the focus towards prevention, population health and delivering more care closer to home.  

  While there is widespread agreement on this direction of travel, turning ambition into sustainable change requires more than policy alone. It demands stronger collaboration across primary care, community services and wider system partners, while embracing innovation and new ways of working. 

  As Wales continues this transition, important questions remain around neighbourhood-based care, prevention, partnership working, data and digital, and how national ambition can be translated into meaningful local action. 

  This session will bring together delegates to ask what changes are needed to accelerate the shift towards care closer to home? What experiences can we share and how can we challenge each other's thinking?   

  • Chair, Cwm Taf Morgannwg & Welsh NHS Confederation

    Jonathan Morgan .

  • Deputy Commissioner and Director for Health, Office of the Future Generations Commissioner

    Marie Brousseau-Navarro

• From strategy to delivery: How do we close the implementation gap in Wales?

  Wales demonstrates strength in developing ambitious, values-driven strategies, but often struggles to translate these into consistent delivery on the ground. Landmark frameworks such as the Well-being of Future Generations Act and A Healthier Wales set a clear vision for prevention, integration and equity. However, implementation falls short of intent.  

  Delivery is often constrained by system complexity, workforce pressures, organisational culture, short-term pressures vs long-term goals, and the lack of long-term financial certainty. Bridging this gap means strengthening whole-system alignment - ensuring national priorities translate into clear, actionable expectations locally.  

  This session will ask delegates to discuss how we turn strong strategy into consistent implementation. What are the barriers to, and opportunities in, implementing strategy and good practice across Wales? The session will provide an opportunity to share examples of good practice where delivery has led to improved outcomes for the population. 

  • Chair, Hywel Dda University Health Board

    Dr Neil Wooding CBE

  • Director, Wales Centre for Public Policy

    Professor Dan Bristow

• From capital constraints to capital solutions: How do we unlock investment in Wales?

  As pressure on health and care services grows, the deteriorating NHS estate and its £1bn essential maintenance backlog in Wales can no longer be ignored. 

  Capital investment in buildings, equipment, technology and digital infrastructure is essential to improving productivity, supporting service transformation and delivering high-quality, sustainable healthcare. Yet NHS organisations in Wales face significant constraints. Health boards cannot readily generate additional income through commercial activity or sell surplus land and assets to fund investment at the scale required, raising questions about whether existing funding mechanisms remain fit for the future. 

  This session will explore the need for new approaches to capital investment and encourage discussion around how alternative funding models could help address the challenge. Drawing on lessons from successful partnership programmes, including the 21st Century Schools and Colleges Programme, we'll discuss whether blended funding approaches, private investment and strategic partnerships could support the modernisation of the NHS estate while maintaining public value, accountability and trust.

  • Chair, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board

    Kristy Williams CBE

  • Chief Executive, Velindre University NHS Trust

    Carl James

• Social care in Wales: how do we balance today’s pressures and tomorrow’s needs

  With a new Welsh Government and Senedd in place, this session will explore how Wales can build a sustainable future for social care while continuing to support people who need care now. 

  It will consider the case for an independent review and a long-term national agreement on the future of social care, looking at how the system can be stabilised, integrated and better resourced.  

  The session will examine how we can address system-wide challenges, including long-term funding, workforce pay and conditions, access to publicly funded care, and greater transparency and consistency in the collection and reporting of social care data. 

  The session will invite delegates to consider what immediate priorities should be taken forward, and how Wales can begin embedding the changes needed to create a fairer, more sustainable social care system now and in the future. 

  • Chair, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board

    Andrew Morgan OBE

• From population health to workforce health: How do we prevent sickness absence?

  Sickness absence across NHS Wales is rising, bringing significant impacts on patient care, workforce wellbeing and organisational costs. Yet NHS staff are not separate from the populations they serve. In many cases, they experience the same health inequalities, socioeconomic challenges and wider determinants of health as their local communities.

  As health boards increasingly adopt population health approaches, there is an opportunity to apply the same principles to workforce wellbeing. By combining workforce data with population health intelligence, including deprivation, disease prevalence and demographic trends, organisations can better understand the root causes of sickness absence and target preventative support where it is needed most.

  This session will ask delegates how population health data can be used to inform workforce prevention strategies and guide the placement of services. How can we move from reactive sickness management to proactive prevention? And what actions would have the greatest impact on creating a healthier, more resilient NHS workforce?

  Chair:

  • Philip Daniels, Director of Public Health, Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board

  Expert speakers:
  •    Helen Watkins, Director of Workforce & Organisational Development, Health Education and Improvement Wales
  •    Lisa Gosling, Director of Workforce & Organisational Development, Hywel Dda University Health Board 

   

13:05Exhibition, networking, lunch

14:10Plenary

• 14.10 Patient voices, better services: turning experience into change

  Patients are the driving force behind everything the NHS does. In this panel session, we'll explore how listening to, learning from and acting on people’s experiences can drive meaningful improvements in health and care services. Three speakers will share powerful personal stories about how their own experiences, and those of loved ones, have helped bring about change and ensure services are more responsive to patients’ and the wider populations needs. They will also reflect on where improvements are needed to ensure person-centred care is at the heart of service delivery across Wales and how we turn patients into partners by default. 

  • CEO and Founder 2Wish

    Rhian Mannings

  • Head of Communities, The UK Sepsis Trust

    Terence Canning

  • Director of Support, Policy & Insight, Tenovus Cancer Care

    Lowri Griffiths

• 14.45 Close of conference

  • Director, Welsh NHS Confederation

    Darren Hughes