HPN South 2026 Agenda

HPN South 2026 Agenda

15 - 16 October 2026, Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow

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08:00
  1. Registration Desk
    45 mins
09:45
  1. The Clinical Note Is Costing You More Than You Think
    Main Room
    20 mins
    Healthcare organisations are investing heavily in AI to capture clinical conversations, but creating the note is only the beginning. The real opportunity is ensuring the clinical record accurately reflects the care delivered and drives action downstream. Join Solventum to explore how a connected AI platform brings together speech and ambient AI, real-time documentation improvement guidance and audit services, AI-assisted coding, analytics and tools such as Follow Up Finder. Using real NHS examples, we will show how better documentation can reduce administrative burden, improve coding accuracy, strengthen quality measures such as SHMI, support appropriate reimbursement and surface clinically important follow-up opportunities
10:10
  1. Main Room
    30 mins
    Our signature ‘Dragons’ Den’ session provides each solution provider with an opportunity to deliver a 60 second pitch, explaining why they are here and how their services can help tackle some of the s ...
10:45
  1. Networking and business meetings
    Networking Area
    75 mins
    15 minute meetings with suppliers who are offering solutions most relevant to your challenges. Please check the schedule on the back of your delegate pass for your meeting timings.
12:05
  1. Main Room
    30 mins
    • Strategy & Leadership
    • Workforce, Skills & Culture
    Experience this candid conversation between the leadership team from Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Following the Wannacry attack in 2017, Northumbria had kickstarted a massive digital t ...
12:40
  1. The Note is not the Finish Line
    Main Room
    20 mins

    This session challenges a core assumption in digital healthcare: that once the clinical note is written, the work is done.
     
    As AI scribes gain traction across the NHS, note generation is becoming standard. However, most solutions stop at documentation, leaving clinicians to complete the administrative work that follows, including letters, referrals, and coding. As a result, significant time is still spent on non-patient tasks, and operational inefficiencies persist.
     
    This talk introduces a different perspective: the note is not the finish line; it is the starting point. Real transformation comes from completing the entire clinical workflow, not just capturing the consultation.
     
    Using real NHS examples, the session explores how ambient voice technology can reduce administrative burden, accelerate care pathways, and improve patient outcomes.
     
    It also highlights a key shift in the market: success is no longer defined by AI capability alone, but by how effectively solutions are implemented and scaled.

  2. Connected Care. Faster Decisions. Better Outcomes
    Breakout Room 1
    20 mins
    Healthcare teams need instant access to the right people and information to deliver exceptional patient care. Outdated tools and fragmented systems can slow teams down, impacting both efficiency and patient safety.
    Join the Mitel Healthcare Team to explore how advanced clinical communications, AI-driven automation, and integrated solutions are helping to accelerate response times, improve collaboration, and keep teams focused where it matters most, on the patient.
    Experience a live demonstration of Mitel's secure, real-time communication platform and innovative language translation capabilities, designed to support diverse patient populations and enable more efficient, inclusive, and patient-centred care.
  3. Reclaiming Control of NHS Bank Spend with AI Agents
    Breakout Room 2
    20 mins
    NHS temporary staffing spend runs into billions, much of it discretionary bank shifts approved with little scrutiny. This session shows how agentic AI changes that. Deployed across multiple NHS trusts, AI agents can validate every Agenda for Change bank request against policy at the point it's raised - approving, rejecting, or referring before the shift is filled. See how trusts are delivering sustained reduction of bank requests, stopping unjustified spend at source rather than deploying staff more cheaply after the fact. We'll explore the evidence, the governance model, and how trusts can realise savings within the current financial year.
  4. Beyond single point of access: Lessons from the front line of referral transformation
    Breakout Room 3
    20 mins
    Single Point of Access is changing how patients enter elective care. But while the ambition is clear, the reality is proving more complex. As NHS organisations begin implementing SPoA models, questions are emerging around referral quality, clinical triage, workforce capacity, patient flow and operational oversight. Drawing on national policy, feedback from across the healthcare system and practical experience supporting referral transformation, this session explores the lessons emerging from early adoption. We will examine the challenges organisations are facing, what some ICBs are doing differently, and what it will take for SPoA to deliver on its promise of faster, more effective patient care.
13:00
  1. Networking lunch
    40 mins
    An opportunity to connect with your peers and suppliers to talk over the learnings from the event. Lunch is served buffet style and a range of options are available to cater for different dietary requ ...
13:45
  1. Scaling AVT across South West London: from system strategy to trust delivery
    Main Room
    20 mins

    As ambient voice technology becomes part of everyday NHS care, this panel brings together senior leadership perspectives from across South West London to explore what integrated deployment really looks like in practice. It will discuss the programme and strategy behind a system-wide approach to AVT at acute provider collaborative level, before hearing from senior leaders at Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust on what it took to deploy AVT safely and efficiently across multiple departments, from early planning through to live use at scale, and how digitising the patient journey is shaping the integration of clinical technology in hospital environments.

14:10
  1. The ADHD Crisis in the UK: A Call to Action
    Main Room
    20 mins

    ADHD360, part of the wider Keys Group, advocates a whole system approach to neurodevelopmental care. ADHD provision done well is preventative and its impact spans health, social care and the wider economy. There has been a great deal of noise around ADHD provision lately, with growing public, political and clinical scrutiny of ADHD and neurodevelopmental services. Here we outline what evidence-based, gold-standard ADHD care looks like in practice - and the benefits for patients. We discuss the opportunity for independent providers to work in partnership with the NHS, collaborating on the development of a national framework for ADHD care.

  2. Building confidence in NHS systems in go-live and beyond
    Breakout Room 1
    20 mins
    Digital and system teams across the NHS are tasked with keeping EPRs and clinical systems running safely while change and transformation arrive faster than ever. Some planned, like go-lives, upgrades and implementations, and some unplanned, like supplier downtime. Every change needs confidence that systems, and the patient journeys running through them, still work. That confidence comes from testing, yet most testing is manual.
    This session shows how digital teams are building a lasting automated testing capability of their own, getting time back from manual, repetitive testing, and keeping pace with transformation with confidence, without adding pressure to stretched teams.
  3. A Paradigm Shift in the Digital Front Door
    Breakout Room 2
    20 mins
    Healthcare technology has reached an inflection point. AI and growing NHS digital adoption have unlocked new tools, opportunities and capacity. In Outpatients, Referrals can arrive with all the right information clinicians need. Patients can be easily kept informed. Teams can spend less time on admin and more time making decisions. Anima already supports 1,200+ GP practices and is now bringing that experience to hospitals. Join us to see how a Digital Front Door can power Single Point of Access and PIFU, connect fragmented pathways, and turn referrals into actionable intelligence. We are looking for NHS Outpatient innovators: is that you?
14:35
  1. Main Room
    25 mins
    • Operations & Service Delivery
    • Outcomes & Impact

    Virtual care has been proven to work for the right patients and pathways, yet most NHS services remain limited to individual hospitals. The session explored how new organisational models, such as Moorfields' SPARC virtual hospital, can overcome these barriers and enable digital services to scale across providers. The proposed NHS Online Hospital offers a potential framework for expanding virtual care across specialties and regions.

  2. Breakout Room 1
    25 mins
    • Digital, Data & AI
    • Operations & Service Delivery
    As financial and operational pressures intensify across the NHS, leaders must improve productivity without reducing care to a narrow exercise in cost or activity. Neetika will share how organisations ...
  3. Breakout Room 2
    25 mins
    • Operations & Service Delivery
    • Outcomes & Impact

    Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust is integrating digital, cyber and estates functions. Hear developments with living labs, reactive lighting, key tracking and smart CCTV. Learn how a joined-up approach can improve operational performance, strengthen resilience and create more intelligent healthcare environments.

  4. Breakout Room 3
    25 mins
    • Digital, Data & AI
    • Operations & Service Delivery

    Ambient voice technology (AVT) is gaining momentum in the NHS, but many implementations remain at pilot stage. This session shares lessons from a large-scale deployment across four acute trusts in southwest London, reaching over 10,000 clinicians.

    Through a shared business case, joint procurement, and collaborative rollout, partners reduced duplication, strengthened supplier negotiations, and accelerated adoption. Attendees will gain practical insights into scaling beyond pilots, working across organisations, and applying a reusable model for future NHS technology procurements.

15:05
  1. The signal beneath the noise
    Main Room
    20 mins

    What a year of NHS deployment data is starting to tell us about AVT

15:30
  1. Networking and business meetings
    Networking Area
    75 mins
    15 minute meetings with suppliers who are offering solutions most relevant to your challenges. Please check the schedule on the back of your delegate pass for your meeting timings.
19:30
  1. Drinks reception and networking dinner
    150 mins
    Networking sessions – throughout the event we host a networking lunch as well as a dinner and drinks reception to give you ample opportunity to connect with your peers and suppliers over the learnings ...
10:05
  1. Is there any more juice left in the orange? Heidi as an AI care partner and the future of supported clinical workflow in the UK
    Main Room
    20 mins
    In this session, Dr Tim Cooper, GP and Clinical Director UKI at Heidi, will explore the current areas where AI is making an impact on healthcare today, and where it's heading next. This will cover current AI applications, what's coming on the product roadmap, and what it takes to deploy AI safely in clinical settings. Drawing on real case studies, he'll show how AI supports clinical workflows, delivers ROI, and helps teams provide high-quality care in line with the NHS 10 Year Plan.
10:25
  1. Outside the consultation room: the NHS workforce AI forgot
    Main Room
    20 mins
    Most of the NHS AI conversation starts and ends in the consultation room. But much of the delay patients experience happens elsewhere: results that come back and aren't acted on, discharges waiting on a form, follow-ups that never get booked. Rachel Finegold, Founder and CEO of Frontier Health, has spent years inside more than 40 NHS hospitals watching where pathways break down. In this session she will explore why the trackers, coordinators and site managers who keep patients moving are the most underserved workforce in the NHS. She will also share what East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust learned from deploying AI to support them.
10:50
  1. How do you know what you don't know? Meeting trusts where they are and building together
    Main Room
    20 mins

    In this session, the Lyrebird Health team are joined by Croydon Health Services NHS Trust for a deep dive into integrating ambient voice technology with Oracle Cerner across South West London. Drawing on real deployments, we'll explore the choice between fast, simple integration and a deeper build, how clinician input can shape requirements as a project develops, and how staying flexible helps keep delivery on track. The session will show how building together helps uncover what you don't know, with practical insight for any trust planning or scaling an EPR integration.

11:15
  1. Networking and business meetings
    Networking Area
    60 mins
    15 minute meetings with suppliers who are offering solutions most relevant to your challenges. Please check the schedule on the back of your delegate pass for your meeting timings.
13:15
  1. Networking lunch
    45 mins
    An opportunity to connect with your peers and suppliers to talk over the learnings from the event. Lunch is served buffet style and a range of options are available to cater for different dietary requ ...

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Frequently Asked Questions

The HPN South 2026 agenda covers the most pressing challenges facing NHS digital leaders, spanning strategy and leadership, digital innovation, data infrastructure, workforce development, and operational efficiency. Sessions explore themes including group trust models and NHS mergers, the evolving landscape of NHS data and AI, the professionalisation of DDaT roles, virtual and online care, cyber and digital integration, and driving productivity without compromising patient outcomes — all grounded in real-world case studies and panel discussions from senior NHS figures.

HPN South 2026 takes place across two days at the Radisson Blu, Heathrow, London on 15 and 16 October 2026. Each day opens with a keynote panel in the main room, chaired by Sir David Sloman, Former Chief Operating Officer, NHS England, before moving into a mix of sponsor presentations, networking and one-to-one business meetings, and themed panel discussions and case study sessions. A number of sessions run concurrently across a main room and up to three breakout rooms, giving attendees a choice of content throughout the day. Both days close with a networking lunch, and Day One is followed by a drinks reception and dinner.

Yes. Breakout sessions and roundtables are selectable, so you can build a programme that reflects your organisation's priorities. Your one-to-one meetings with solution providers are scheduled around the main agenda to ensure you don't miss the sessions most relevant to you.

Yes. All delegates receive a conference guide on arrival, and digital copies of presentation materials are made available after the event. This means you can focus on the conversation in the room, knowing you'll have everything you need to share insights and act on takeaways when you're back at your organisation.

We strongly recommend attending both days to get the full benefit of the programme – including the networking dinner, which is where many of the most valuable conversations happen. That said, if your schedule only allows for one day, please let us know and we'll do our best to accommodate you.