Digital Health and Care Wales has awarded a contract worth £136,749 to Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research for the implementation of a FHIR Terminology Software Licence for the Wales Terminology Service, part of its National Data Resource infrastructure.
This procurement will support Digital Health and Care Wales in distributing its nationally agreed data and information standards, it states. Beginning in March 2026, the contract will run to the end of February 2028, with a possible extension for a further year to February 2029.
NHS Wales recently shared that its National Data Resource programme achieved a milestone, with encounters data from Cardiff and Vale University Health Board linked into the care data repository. This update brings data such as referrals, outpatient appointments, and inpatient admissions together in a structured and standardised way, said to create a more complete picture of patient journeys and support better care coordination.
Teams worked with Cardiff and Vale patient management system colleagues to ensure relevant data can be transferred “consistently and correctly” from source systems, using HL7v2 standards and secure processing through integration services to surface in the care data repository.
More on digital health transformation in Wales
Digital Health and Care Wales has shared updates on the introduction of digital fit requests at Hywel Dda University Health Board, a “major” email server upgrade, and the official accreditation of a course in analytics and AI. A new digital way of working alongside a Symptomatic Faecal Immunochemical Tests (S-FIT) for patients with lower gastro-intestinal tract issues has been introduced at Hywel Dda University Health Board. The digital FIT model includes an electronic test requesting process to provide access for GPs to important information when making decisions about patient pathways and prioritisation, DHCW shares. The aim is to speed up access to diagnostic testing and treatment.
The latest update to the NHS Wales App has introduced visibility for patients on their current position on NHS waiting lists, enabling them to view their referrals into hospital care, see details of upcoming appointments, and access information on managing their health while waiting for treatment. So far, more than 80,000 waiting list referrals and 197,000 hospital appointment notifications have been added to the App, according to NHS Wales. This adds to existing functionality allowing people to order repeat prescriptions and view their health and prescription history, send secure messages to their GP surgery, and access advice on things like screening services.
The Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust board has shared its digital KPIs, work on information governance, and discussed the risks surrounding unauthorised or inappropriate use of AI. On progress around WAST’s digital plan and digital KPIs, the trust notes “significant pressures” due to competing priorities and limited capacity for digital teams, with the trust sharing ongoing efforts to recruit for 26 additional roles. An area of current focus is a refresh of the WAST electronic patient care record application, which has reportedly received formal approval. Here, the trust outlines three key mitigations to be worked on, covering the design of the ePCR user interface, clinician interaction with the ePCR, and the accuracy of the scripting to extract the data from the data warehouse to create reports.
