Two days at Healthcare Excellence Through Technology

It’s 24 September and HETT is about to open at ExCeL London. What can you expect at the show? Five content streams, a big exhibition, and lots of new features. Let’s go.  

It’s 8.30 am on Tuesday, 24 September, and you’re grabbing a quick coffee before heading into Healthcare Excellence Through Technology at ExCeL London.  

You’re still buzzing after last night’s Rockaoke fundraiser for The Brain Tumour Charity, with karaoke and drinks at The Fox. But now there’s two full days of in-depth panels, a 150-stand exhibition, and a host of new features to explore.   

9 am: Time to pick up your badge, walk into the show, catch a performance from the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir, and study the agenda.  

9.45 am: It’s hard to know which keynote to pick. Over in the infrastructure, data and cyber security theatre, Ming Tang, NHS England is sharing an update and insight into the Federated Data Platform.

New health and social care secretary Wes Streeting expressed “disappointment” about the slow take-up of the FDP during the general election campaign and NHS England has just mandated its use. So, it’s happening.  

On the other hand, Wes Streeting has also thrown his support behind the NHS App, and over in the digitally empowered patients theatre, a panel is discussing how to use it to bridge health inequalities and promote digital literacy.  

10.30 am: Time for the second session of the day. In the integrated care forum, NHS England’s frontline digitisation team is talking about electronic patient records and how to support teams from convergence to optimisation. You decide to head over for that.    

11 am: You could stay on in the theatre for one of HETT’s fireside chats. Sue Lang and Amy Lodge from NHS England are going to be discussing its vision for providing NHS trusts with automation as a service alongside Matt Hogarth from UiPath.  

But you really want to catch one of the demonstrations in the new product demo zone, where TidalSense and uPerform have been showing their diagnostic and learning support solutions, and Airwave Healthcare has been demonstrating its education, information and entertainment solutions for staff and patients.  

Right now, QuestPrehab, a leading provider of digital prehabilitation services, is demonstrating how its technology can help patients prepare for cancer treatment or major surgery and explaining how it is going to be working with patients waiting for liver transplants across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.  

11.30 am: Leaving the demonstration, you decide to visit the exhibition, which has more than 150 stands covering every aspect of healthcare technology from EPRs to patient engagement tools, data and AI.  

That’s a lot to get around, so HETT has introduced a new feature – the innovation trail. This is a curated path designed to connect you with exhibitors chosen to match your interests and goals. On the way, you bump into a former colleague and grab lunch.  

1:45 pm: The Federation for Informatics Professionals is holding a meet-up with future digital leaders up in the Gallery Room.But the workforce, adoption and productivity theatre takes your fancy, with a session exploring the development of strategies to support NHS staff in delivering safe AI implementation.

3 pm: It’s two hours to the end of day one. You’ve not visited the digital maturity forum yet, but in the infrastructure, data and cybersecurity theatre The Royal Society of Medicine is recording a live digital health podcast.  

The subject: how to scale AI in the NHS, learning lessons from the Stroke AI Rollout. Featuring: Annabelle Painter from the RSM, Darrien Bold from NHS England, and George Harston from Brainomix. All live! 

4 pm: Time to kick-back. In the run up to the show, you applied to be a HETT leader, which comes with a host of benefits, including access to a VIP lounge, hosted lunches and dinners, dedicated content streams, and the chance to contribute to HETT content.  

It also means you can attend the VIP drinks, which include a special set from NHS digital leader and DJ Gary McAllister. Although there’s also end of day drinks back at The Fox. Either way: the perfect way to wrap up the day.  

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It’s 9.30 am on Wednesday, 25 September, and you’re heading back into HETT for day two. Better hurry. The digital maturity forum has a keynote address from Vin Diwakar, NHS England. 

10.30 am: You decide to make another tour of the exhibition. Perhaps visit Nervecentre, which has developed a cloud-based, modular electronic patient record, and has just been able to announce its sixth and seventh trust customers.  

Or Better, which is known for its open data health platform and recently announced that Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, the largest in Wales, is going to be using its electronic prescribing and medicines management system.

Or Induction, which provides the Zesty patient engagement portal, and is taking part in the conference with a session on: ‘clearing the path; digital strategies for tackling the NHS elective backlog.’

Perhaps take a look at how SPARK TSL has built on its heritage of delivering wi-fi and bedside units to bring the SPARK Fusion solution to the UK. This will support hospitals staff and patients with everything from nurse call and meal ordering to proactive information resources to reduce readmission rates.

Or catch more innovation. Perhaps learn about Oulu in Finland, which is home to many thriving businesses, including OuluHealth, a health and well-being ecosystem that has given rise to well-known innovations, such as the Polar fitness watches, Mednets mobile solution for supporting EPR adoption, or Monidor remote patient monitoring solution.

While you’re on the Oulu stand, have a look at Peili Vision’s EFSim or Executive Function Simulation, a naturalistic, online-based triage tool to revolutionise ADHD screening in children, which is offering a week-long trial in November.

Infrastructure more your thing? Equinix will be showing how it can help customers to juggle multiple private clouds and find optimal solutions for their EPRs, PACS, and other clinical applications.

While vCreate will be demonstrating how its cloud-based, multi-language clinical video management software can handle videos, pictures, and data from patients, to support digital pathways and engagement.

And Toca will be at the exhibition with its e-Triage platform, an advanced, low-code, configurable environment to streamline administrative tasks across clinical settings.

12.30 pm: After an early lunch, it’s back to the digital maturity forum for a session looking at how to support the least digitally mature trusts with a case study from the East of England.  

Although over in the digitally empowered patients theatre, there’s an interesting presentation from NHS England about the NHS App’s new tracking feature – which sounds super-useful.  

And in the infrastructure, data and cyber security theatre, there’s a discussion about achieving net zero and the role of digital in creating a greener NHS – which is a hot button issue for younger staff.  

2 pm: Talking about hot button issues, the closing panel in the infrastructure, data and cyber security theatre is discussing cyber security. The NHS has been hit by several, high-profile ransomware incidents recently, so the question of how to keep pace is key.  

3 pm: It’s nearly the end of the show, so it’s time for some reflection. For the closing keynote panel, Mike Fell from NHS England joined by clinical and innovation experts from across the NHS to discuss how the new government can transform health and care.  

The message from a busy and invigorating two days at HETT is that health tech and med tech will be a big part of the answer.