On 7 October 2025, our UK Healthcare Lead, John Evans, attended HETT (Healthcare Excellence Through Technology) at ExCeL London — one of the UK’s leading events focused on digital transformation within health and care.
The atmosphere this year reflected a clear message: the NHS is shifting from digital strategy to digital reality. Conversations moved beyond vision statements to the practicalities of implementation, adoption, and measurable impact across healthcare systems.
Key Themes from HETT 2025
1. The 10-Year NHS Plan and Battling Bureaucracy
The long-term vision for the NHS was front and centre. While the ambition is clear, many discussions acknowledged the operational hurdles — particularly the need to simplify governance, streamline processes, and enable innovation to thrive at scale.
2. Data, Integration, and the Single Patient Record
The move toward a Single Patient Record was identified as essential to delivering joined-up, patient-centred care. Achieving this depends on interoperability, consistent data standards, and — critically — public trust built through transparency and strong governance.
3. Innovation vs Implementation
Short-term pilots are no longer enough. The consensus was that sustainable digital transformation requires multi-year investment, dedicated workforce time, and a shift from technology delivery to adoption and outcomes.
4. People, Skills, and Culture
Digital transformation isn’t just about platforms — it’s about people. Speakers reinforced that co-design, usability, and digital competence must be embedded across the workforce, supported by strong clinical leadership and continuous learning.
5. Safe AI at Scale
AI continues to hold huge promise, but with caution. As one speaker put it, AI should be seen as a “well-informed intern, not the decision-maker.” Safe adoption demands evolving governance, ethics, and patient engagement to ensure technology supports, rather than replaces, clinical judgment.
John Evans’ Reflection
“HETT 2025 highlighted the critical balance between innovation and implementation. The NHS is ready to embrace digital transformation — but success will depend on aligning technology, workforce capability, and organisational culture. The technology is there; now the challenge is to make it real.”
– John Evans, Head of Healthcare UK, Diktamen
Final Thoughts
Trust, interoperability, and human-centred design will define how well the UK turns its digital health vision into meaningful impact.
At Diktamen, we believe this alignment between technology and people is key. Our voice capture and clinical documentation solutions are built to reduce administrative burden, empower clinicians, and free up time for patient care — helping to turn innovation into everyday reality across healthcare systems.
We’d also like to acknowledge the many innovators and leaders driving positive change across the NHS and digital health ecosystem — including Massimo Micocci, Sura A., Clive Flashman, Helen Hughes, Victoria Betton, Ben J., Heena Patel, Ameneh Ghazal S., Matea Deliu, Pritesh Mistry, Rachel Dunscombe, Ram Rajaraman, Dominique Allwood, Euan McComiskie, Ronke Adejolu, Gurnak Singh Dosanjh, Dr. Keith Grimes, Hannah Foster, Amber Kennard, James Freed, Dr. Avi Mehra, and many more who continue to inspire progress.
Learn more about Diktamen
Discover how Diktamen is helping NHS Trusts adopt ambient clinical documentation with a cost-effective, low-risk plug-in that enhances workflows and reduces clinician workload.