How innovation can tackle the challenges facing the NHS

Cari-Anne Quinn

How can innovation and its adoption help address some of the challenges facing the NHS in Wales?

Wales has an opportunity to embrace new ways of working in order to help create a more sustainable health and care system. The challenge facing the NHS is not simply one of capacity, but of how services can work differently to improve outcomes for patients, support the workforce, and make better use of innovation across the system.

The health system in Wales has to work differently. More than 796,000 people in Wales are currently waiting for NHS treatment, and the number waiting over 36 weeks is now 22.2 times higher than before the pandemic. Only 63% of A&E patients are seen within four hours, significantly below the 95% target.

For patients, these are not just performance measures. They are waits for answers, delays to treatment, and uncertainty at a time when people often feel at their most vulnerable.

These figures, highlighted by the British Medical Association, will not be new to anyone working in or relying on the health system. But they land differently now. Wales has a new government, a First 100 Days programme that puts surgical hubs at its centre.

The Welsh Government’s £145m investment package includes £100m to reduce waiting lists, £25m for new surgical and diagnostic hubs, and £20m for estate and equipment upgrades.

Capacity alone will not solve the challenge. We need to ask not only how we do more, but how we do things differently. In my view, that is where innovation has to be part of the answer – but only if it is adopted in the right way, in the right parts of the system, and at the scale it demands.

Cancer – a national priority

Cancer shows why capacity alone will not be enough. Between 2002 and 2022, the number of new cancer cases in Wales rose by almost a third, increasing from around 16,000 to just over 21,000 diagnoses. Over half of all cancer cases in 2022 occurring in people aged 70 and over.

Breast, colorectal and lung cancers make up more than half of all diagnoses. This is one of the biggest pressures facing the system, and demand will only grow as the population ages.

But the issue is not only how many people need care. It’s whether they can access diagnosis and treatment quickly enough. The latest BMA figures show that only 61.3% of patients started cancer treatment within 62 days, well below the 80% target.

These delays have real consequences, with evidence from Cancer Research UK showing that a four-week delay to cancer treatment can increase mortality risk by 6-8%.

Speed of diagnosis and treatment is only part of the problem. People do not always experience cancer care equally. Too often, access to diagnosis, treatment and support can differ depending on where someone lives or their background, rather than clinical need.

Cancer mortality in Wales is reported as 54% higher in the most deprived areas than in the least deprived. This unwarranted variation is exactly why increasing capacity, while important, is not enough. What strikes me most is that the challenge is not only to treat more people, but to make sure people can access the right care earlier, wherever they live in Wales.

Addressing it requires a more targeted, data-driven approach to identifying where variation exists, understanding what is driving delays, and accelerating the adoption of proven innovations that can improve pathways and outcomes.

Through our partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, Life Sciences Hub Wales is helping to bring NHS organisations, industry, patients and policymakers together to identify where these variations occur across Wales and support the adoption of proven solutions that can reduce delays, improve equity of access and inform long-term priorities for cancer care.

Innovation and adoption impact

Innovation must be understood properly. It’s not about adding more technology into an already pressured system for the sake of it. It’s about identifying where the system is stuck, where delays are happening, and where proven solutions can help people move through care more safely and efficiently. Wales cannot improve outcomes and resilience by relying on traditional approaches alone.

It needs faster adoption of proven innovation across health and social care, supported by the partnerships, evidence and implementation routes that allow good ideas to move beyond individual pilots. Innovation only changes lives when it reaches patients.

This is where Life Sciences Hub Wales has a practical role to play. Through our clinical engagement work, we’re working with clinical teams and partners to connect frontline insight with evidence, so that innovation is focused on the areas where it can make the greatest difference.

Practical examples already exist. Cardiff and Vale’s Rapid Diagnosis Clinic reduced average referral-to-diagnosis times from 84.2 days to 6.2 days in its first year, showing how pathway redesign can make a tangible difference when focused around patient need.

In north Wales, an AI-driven waiting list validation tool co-developed by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and digital health company EBO has used SMS and chatbot technology to help confirm whether patients still need treatment.

During pilot phases, the tool removed 6-7% of patients from waiting lists. That kind of innovation will not solve the backlog alone, but it shows how targeted tools can release capacity when they are applied to a clear system problem.

Wider evidence also points to the potential. In England, recent statistics from the Health Innovation Network suggests NHS productivity increased by 2.7% in 2024/25, supported by innovation and changes in the way services are delivered. The same analysis points to the potential of AI tools to reduce administrative burden and free up more clinical time, including enabling clinicians to spend nearly a quarter more time with patients and cutting documentation in A&E by over half.

But the point is not technology for its own sake. The real opportunity is adoption. Understanding which innovations are right for which pathways, supporting them with the right evidence and business case, and making sure they can be implemented at the pace and scale needed. This is particularly important as Wales invests in surgical and diagnostic hubs.

These hubs will create extra capacity, but their impact will be greater if they are designed around new ways of working – using data, digital tools, pathway redesign and partnership with industry to reduce duplication, improve flow and help patients move through care faster.

The wider life sciences opportunity for Wales Wales doesn’t only need more innovation; it needs a stronger route to adoption.

That opportunity is also bigger than health. Wales has a strong life sciences sector, employing more than 13,000 people across approximately 300 companies and generating around £3.6bn in annual turnover. That gives Wales a foundation not only to adopt innovation, but to develop, test and scale solutions that respond to the needs of its own health and social care system.

Every innovation successfully adopted in Wales improves the lives of patients while also strengthening one of our highest-value sectors. At a time when productivity and economic growth are high on the political agenda, this matters.

Recent statements from Adam Price, the Minister for Enterprise, Connectivity and Energy have stated an ambition to halve Wales’s productivity gap with the rest of the UK within ten years and create a new Welsh innovation and development agency.

Health innovation sits directly within that ambition. It can support outcomes for patients while also creating high-value jobs, attracting investment, and bringing new expertise closer to the frontline.

If Wales gets this right, innovation can support better outcomes for patients and a stronger economy. Innovation alone will not fix health care in Wales. But paired with the right partnerships and a genuine route to adoption, it is one of the few levers left that can meet rising demand without simply asking an already stretched workforce to do more with less.

That is the case Life Sciences Hub Wales exists to make in practice: connecting system need with proven innovation, bringing partners together across sectors, and helping good ideas spread at the scale and speed the moment demands.

If Wales can combine political ambition, NHS leadership and faster adoption of proven innovation, we have an opportunity not simply to improve services, but to build a healthier nation and a stronger economy. That is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.

Cari-Anne Quinn is Chief Executive Officer, Life Sciences Hub Wales

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